" 


William  Morris 

After  the  painting  by  Watts. 


VOLUME  VI 


NEW  SERIES 


Copyright,  1899,  by  Elbert  Hubbard. 


Of  this  edition  but  nine  hundred  and  forty-seven 
copies  were  printed  and  illumined  by  hand.  This  book 
is  Number  -^ oZj, 


SLLVnmEB^M 


INDEX 

1  William  Morris z 

2  Robert  Browning       ....  2$ 

3  Alfred  Tennyson            ....  51 

4  Robert  Burns             ....  73 

5  John  Milton 97 

6  Samuel  Johnson        ....  zzg 


r 


WILLIAM  MORRIS 


THE  IDLE  SINGER. 

From  "  The  Earthly  Paradise." 

Of  Heaven  or  Hell  I  have  no  power  to  sing, 
I  cannot  ease  the  burden  of  your  fears, 
Or  make  quick-coming  death  a  little  thing. 
Or  bring  again  the  pleasure  of  past  years, 
Nor  for  my  words  shall  ye  forget  your  tears, 
Or  hope  again  for  aught  that  I  can  say, 
The  idle  singer  of  an  empty  day. 

But  rather,  when  aweary  of  your  mirth. 

From  full  hearts  still  unsatisfied  ye  sigh. 

And  feeling  kindly  unto  all  the  earth, 

Grudge  every  minute  as  it  passes  by, 

Made  the  more  mindful  that  the  sweet  days  die, — 

Remember  me  a  little  then,  I  pray. 

The  idle  singer  of  an  empty  day. 

The  heavy  trouble,  the  bewildering  care 

That  weighs  us  down  who  live  and  earn  our  bread, 

These  idle  verses  have  no  power  to  bear. 

So  let  me  sing  of  names  remembered. 

Because  they,  living  not,  can  ne'er  be  dead. 

Or  long  time  take  their  memory  quite  away 

From  a  poor  singer  of  an  empty  day. 

Dreamer  of  dreams,  born  out  of  my  due  time. 
Why  should  I  strive  to  set  the  crooked  straight  ? 
Let  it  suffice  me  that  my  murmuring  rhyme 
Beats  with  light  wing  against  the  ivory  gate, 
Telling  a  tale  not  too  importunate 
To  those  who  in  the  sleepy  region  stay, 
Lulled  by  the  singer  of  an  empty  day. 


IHE  parents  of  William  Morris  were  WILLIAM 
well-to-do  people  who  lived  in  the  MORRIS  ¥ 
village  of  ^Vathamstow,  Essex.  The 
father  was  a  London  bill  broker,  cool- 
headed,  calculating  &  intensely  prac- 
tical 1^  In  the  home  of  his  parents 
William  Morris  surely  received  small 
impulse  in  the  direction  of  art ;  he, 
however,  was  taught  how  to  make  both 
ends  meet,  and  there  ^vere  drilled  into 
his  chara(5ler  many  good  lessons  of 
I  plain  common  sense — a  rather  unusual 
;quipment  for  a  poet,  but  still  one  that 
[should  not  be  waived  nor  considered 
lightly.  At  the  village  school  William 
was  neither  precocious  nor  dull,neither 
black  nor  white  :  his  cosmos  being 
simply  a  sort  of  slatcy-gray,  which 
attra<5led  no  special  attention  from 
schoolfellows  or  tutors. 
From  the  village  school  he  went  to 
Marlborough  Academy,  where  by  pa- 
tient grubbing  he  fitted  himself  for 
Exeter  College,  Oxford. 
Morris  the  elder,  proved  his  good 
sense  by  taking  no  very  special  inter- 
est in  the  boy's  education  : — violence 
iof  dire(5^ion  in  education  falls  fiat: 


WILLIAM  man  is  a  lonely  creature,  and  has  to  work  out  his  career 
MORRIS  1»  in  his  own  way.  To  help  the  grub  spin  its  cocoon  is 
quite  unnecessary,  and  to  play  the  part  of  Mrs.  Gamp 
with  the  butterfly  in  its  chrysalis  stage  is  to  place  a 
quietus  upon  its  career.  The  whole  science  of  modern 
education  is  calculated  to  turn  out  a  good,  fairish, 
commonplace  article  ;  but  the  formula  for  a  genius  re- 
mains a  secret  with  Deity.  The  great  man  becomes 
great  in  spite  of  teachers  and  parents ;  and  his  near 
kinsmen,  being  color-blind,  usually  pooh-pooh  the  idea 
that  he  is  anything  more  than  mediocre. 
1^  At  Oxford,  W^illiam  Morris  fell  in  with  a  young 
man  of  about  his  ow^n  age  by  the  name  of  Edward 
Burne-Jones.  Burne-Jones  was  studying  theology.  He 
\vas  slender  in  stature,  dreamy,  spiritual,  poetic.  Mor- 
ris was  a  giant  in  strength,  blunt  m  speech,  bold  in 
manner,  and  had  a  shock  of  hair  like  a  lion's  mane. 
This  was  in  the  year  1853 — these  young  men  being 
nineteen  years  of  age.  The  slender,  yellow,  dreamy 
student  of  theology  and  the  ruddy  athlete  became  fast 
friends  ^€<fi^ 

"  Send  your  sons  to  college  and  the  boys  will  educate 
them,"  said  Emerson. These  boys  read  poetry  together; 
and  it  seems  the  first  author  that  specially  attra(5led 
them  was  Mrs.  Browning ;  &  she  attra<5ted  them  sim- 
ply because  she  had  recently  eloped  with  the  man  she 
loved.  This  fact  proved  to  Morris  that  she  was  a  worthy 
woman  and  a  discerning.  She  had  the  courage  of  his 
convictions.  To  elope  with  a  poor  poet,  leaving  a  rich 
2 


father  and  a  luxurious  home — what  nobler  ambition  ?  WILLIAM 
Burne-Jones,  student  of  theology,  considered  her  ac-  MORRIS  ¥ 
tion  proof  of  depravity.  Morris,  in  order  to  show  his 
friend  that  Mrs.  Browning  was  really  a  rare  and  gentle 
soul,  read  aloud  to  Burne-Jones  from  her  books.  In 
facft,  Morris  himself  had  never  read  much  of  Mrs. 
Browning's  work,  but  in  championing  her  cause  and  in- 
teresting his  friend  in  her,  he  himself  grew  interested. 
Like  lawyers,  we  champion  a  cause  first  and  look  for 
proof  later.  In  teaching  another,  Morris  taught  himself. 
By  explaining  a  theme  it  becomes  luminous  to  us. 
In  passing,  it  is  well  to  note  that  this  impulse  in  the 
heart  of  William  Morris  to  come  to  the  defense. of  an 
accused  person  was  ever  very  strong.  His  defense  of 
Mrs.  Browning  led  straight  to  •*  The  Defense  of  Guin- 
evere," begun  while  at  Oxford  and  printed  in  book  form 
in  his  twenty-fourth  year.  Not  that  the  offenses  of 
Guinevere  and  Elizabeth  Barrett  were  parallel,  but 
Morris  was  by  nature  a  defender  of  women.  And  it 
should  further  be  noted  that  Tennyson  had  not  yet 
written  his  "  Idylls  of  the  King,"  at  the  time  Morris 
wrote  his  poetic  brief. 

Another  author  that  these  young  men  took  up  at  this 
time  was  Ruskin.  John  Ruskin  was  fifteen  years  older 
than  Morris — an  Oxford  man,  too, — also  the  son  of  a 
merchant  and  rich  by  inheritance.  Ruskin's  natural  in- 
dependence, his  ability  for  original  thinking  and  his  ac- 
tion in  embracing  the  cause  of  Turner,  the  ridiculed, 
won  the  heart  of   Morris.   In   Ruskin    he    found    a 

3 


WILLIAM  writer  who  expressed  the  thoughts  that  he  believed. 

MORRIS  ¥  He  read  Ruskin,  and  insisted  that  Burne-Jones  should. 
Together  they  read  •'  The  Nature  of  Gothic,"  and  then 
they  went  out  upon  the  streets  of  Oxford  &  studied  ex- 
amples at  first  hand.  They  compared  the  old  with  the 
new  &  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  buildings  erect- 
ed two  centuries  before  had  various  points  to  recom- 
mend them  which  modern  buildings  had  not.  The  mod- 
ern buildings  were  built  by  contra(5tors,  while  the  old 
ones  were  constru(5led  by  men  who  had  all  the  time 
there  was,  and  so  they  worked  out  their  conceptions 
of  the  eternal  fitness  of  things. 

Then  these  young  men,  with  several  others,  drew  up  a 
remonstrance  against  "  the  desecration  by  officious  res- 
toration, &  the  tearing  down  of  time-mellowed  stru<5t- 
ures  to  make  room  for  the  unsightly  brick  piles  of 
boarding-house  keepers." 

The  remonstrance  was  sent  in  to  the  authorities,  and 
by  them  duly  pigeon-holed,  with  a  passing  remark  that 
young  fellows  sent  to  Oxford  to  be  educated  had  better 
attend  to  their  books  and  mind  their  own  business. 
Having  espoused  the  cause  of  the  Middle  Ages  in  archi- 
tecture, these  young  men  began  to  study  the  history 
of  the  people  who  lived  in  the  olden  time.  They  read 
Spenser  and  Chaucer,  and  chance  threw  in  their  way  a 
dog-eared  copy  of  Malory's  "  Morte  D'  Arthur,"  &this 
was  still  more  dog-eared  when  they  were  through  with 
it.  Probably  no  book  ever  made  more  of  an  impression 
on  Morris  than  this  one  ;  and  if  he  had  written  an  ar- 
4 


tide  for  the  "  Ladies'  Home  Journal  "  on  '•  Books  that  WILLIAM 
Influenced  Me  Most,"  he  would  have  placed  Malory's  MORRIS^ 
"  Morte  D'  Arthur  "  first. 

The  influence  of  Burne-Jones  on  Morris  was  marked, 
and  the  influence  of  Morris  on  Burne-Jones  was  pro- 
found. Morris  discovered  himself  in  explaining  things 
to  Burne-Jones,  and  Burne-Jones,  without  knowing  it, 
adopted  the  opinions  of  Morris  ;  and  it  was  owing  to 
Morris  that  he  gave  up  theology. 

Having  abandoned  the  object  that  led  him  to  college, 
Burne-Jones  lost  faith  in  Oxford,  and  went  down  to 
London  to  study  art. 

Morris  hung  on,  secured  his  B.  A.  and  articled  himself 
to  a  local  architect  with  the  firm  intent  of  stopping  the 
insane  drift  for  modern  mediocrity,  and  bringing  about 
a  just  regard  for  the  stately  dignity  of  the  Gothic. 
A  few  months'  experience,  however,  and  he  discovered 
that  an  apprentice  to  an  architecTt  was  not  expecSted  to 
furnish  plans  nor  even  criticise  those  already  made : 
his  business  was  to  make  detailed  drawings  from  com- 
pleted designs  for  the  contracftors  to  work  from. 
A  year  at  architecture,  with  odd  hours  filled  in  at  poet- 
ry and  art,  and  news  came  from  Burne-Jones  that  he 
had  painted  a  picture,  and  sold  it  for  ten  pounds. 
Now  Morris  had  all  the  money  he  needed.  His  father's 
prosperity  was  at  flood,  &  he  had  but  to  hint  for  funds 
and  they  came,  yet  to  make  things  with  your  own  hands 
and  sell  them  was  the  true  test  of  success. 
He  had  writen  "  Gertha's  Lovers,"  "  The  Tale  of  the 

5 


WILLIAM  Hollow  Land,"  and  various  poems  and  essays  for  the 
MORRIS  ¥  college  magazines  ;  &  his  book,  **  The  Defense  of  Guin- 
evere," had  been  issued  at  his  own  expense,  and  the 
edition  was  on  his  hands — a  heavy  weight. 
Thoreau  wrote  to  his  friends,  when  the  house  burned 
and  destroyed  all  copies  of  his  first  book,  **  The  edition 
is  exhausted,"  but  no  such  happiness  came  to  Morris. 
And  so  when  glad  tidings  of  an  artistic  success  came 
from  Burne-Jones,  he  resolved  to  follow  the  lead  and 
abandon  archite(5lure  for  "  pure  art." 
Arriving  in  London  he  placed  himself  under  the  tutor- 
ship of  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti,  a  poet,  dreamer  &  artist 
six  years  his  senior,  whom  he  had  known  for  some 
time,  and  who  had  also  instru<5\ed  Burne-Jones. 
While  taking  lessons  in  painting  at  the  rather  shabby 
house  of  Rossetti  in  Portland  Street,  he  was  introduced 
to  Rossetti's  favorite  model — a  young  woman  of  rare 
grace  and  beauty.  Rossetti  had  painted  her  picTture  as 
"  The  Blessed  Damozel,"  leaning  over  the  bar  of  Heav- 
en, while  the  stars  in  her  hair  were  seven.  Morris  the 
impressionable  fell  in  love  with  the  canvas  and  then 
the  'woman. 

When  they  were  married,  tradition  has  it,  that  Ros- 
setti withheld  his  blessing  &  sought  to  drown  his  sor- 
row in  fomentations,  with  dark,  dank  hints  in  baritone 
to  the  effect  that  the  Thames  only  could  appreciate 
his  grief. 

But  grief  is  transient ;  and  for  many  years  Rossetti  and 
Burne-Jones  pictured  the  tall,  willowy  figure  of  Mrs. 
6 


Morris  as  the  dream-woman,  on  tapestry  and  canvas  ;  WILLIAM 
and  as  the  "  Blessed  Virgin,"  her  beautiful  face  and   MORRIS  l» 
form  are  shown  in  many  sacred  places. 
Truth  need  not  be  distorted  in  a  frantic  attempt  to  make 
this  an  ideal  marriage — only  a  woman  with  the  intel- 
lect of  Minerva  could  have  filled  the  restless  heart  of 
William  Morris.  But  the  wife  of  Morris  believed  in  her 
lord,  and  never  sought  to  hamper  him,  and  if  she  failed 
at  times  to  comprehend  his  genius  it  was  only  because 
she  was  human.  Possibly  she  could  not  throw  her  net 
over  a  sublime  idea,  but  surely  she  was  not  a  vampire, 
ijji Whistler  once  remarked  that  without  Mrs.  Morris  to 
supply  stained  glass  attitudes  and  the  lissome  beauty 
of  an  angel,  the  Pre-Raphaelites  would  have  long  since 
gone  down  to  dust  and  forgetfulness. 

HE  year  which  William  Morris 
spent  at  archite<5ture,  he  con- 
sidered as  nearly  a  waste  of 
time,  but  it  was  not  so  in  fact. 
As  a  draughtsman  he  had  devel- 
oped a  marvelous  skill,  and  the 
grace  and  sureness  of  his  lines 
were  a  delight  to  Burne-Jones, 
Rossetti,  Holman  Hunt,  Ford 
Madox  Brown  and  others  of  the 
little  artistic  circle  in  which  he  found  himself. 
Youth  lays  great  plans ;  youth  is  always  in  revolt 
against  the  present  order;  youth  groups  itself  in  bands 
and  swears  eternal  fealty ;  and  life,  which  is  change, 

7 


WILLIAM  dissipates  the  plans,  subdues  the  revolt  into  conformity, 
MORRIS  ¥  &  the  sworn  friendships  fade  away  into  dull  indifference. 
Always  ?  Well,  no,  not  exactly.  In  this  instance  the 
plans  and  dreams  found  form  ;  the  revolt  was  a  revolu- 
tion that  succeeded ;  and  the  brotherhood  existed  for 
near  fifty  years  and  then  was  severed  only  by  death. 
W^ithout  going  into  a  history  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
Brotherhood,  it  will  be  noted  that  the  band  of  enthu- 
siasts in  art,  literature  and  architecture  had  been  swung 
by  the  arguments  and  personality  of  William  Morris 
into  the  strong  current  of  his  own  belief,  and  this  was 
that  Art  and  Life  in  the  Middle  Ages  were  much  love- 
lier things  than  they  are  now. 

That  being  so,  we  should  go  back  to  medieval  times 
for  our  patterns.  A  study  of  the  best  household  deco- 
ration of  the  Fifteenth  Century  showed  that  all  the 
furniture  used  then  was  made  to  fit  a  certain  apart- 
ment, and  with  a  definite  purpose  in  view.  Of  course 
it  was  made  by  hand,  and  the  loving  marks  of  the 
tool  were  upon  it  i^  It  was  made  as  good  and  strong 
and  durable  as  it  could  be  made.  Floors  and  walls  were 
of  mosaic  or  polished  wood,  and  these  were  partially 
covered  by  beautifully  woven  rugs,  skins  and  tapestries. 
The  ceilings  were  sometimes  ornamented  with  pi<5tures 
painted  in  harmony  with  the  use  for  which  the  room 
was  designed.  Certainly  there  were  no  chromos,  and 
the  pi<Jtures  were  few  and  these  of  the  best,  for  the 
age  was  essentially  a  critical  one. 
A  modest  circular  was  issued  in  which  the  fact  was 
8 


made  known  that,  '♦  A  company  of  historical  artists  WILLIAM 
^11  use  their  talents  in  home  decoration,"  MORRIS  ¥ 

Dealers  into  whose  hands  this  circular  fell,  smiled  in 
derision,  &  the  announcement  made  no  splash  in  Eng- 
land's artistic  waters.  But  the  leaven  was  at  work 
which  was  bound  to  cause  a  revolution  in  the  tastes  of 
fifty  million  people. 

Most  of  our  best  moves  are  accidents,  and  every  good 
thing  begins  as  something  else.  In  the  beginning  there 
was  no  expe(5\ation  of  building  up  a  trade  or  making  a 
financial  success  of  the  business.  The  idea  was  simply 
that  the  eight  young  men  who  composed  the  band  were 
to  use  their  influence  in  helping  each  other  to  secure 
commissions,  and  corroborate  the  views  of  doubting 
patrons  as  to  what  was  art  &  what  not.  In  other  words, 
they  were  to  stand  by  each  other.  Ford  Madox  Brown, 
Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti,  Burne-Jones  &  Arthur  Hughes 
were  painters  ;  Philip  Webb  an  architedl ;  Peter  Paul 
Marshall  a  landscape  gardener  and  engineer  :  Charles 
Joseph  Faulkner,  an  Oxford  don,  was  a  designer,  and 
William  Morris  was  an  all  'round  artist — ready  to  turn 
his  hand  to  anything. 

These  men  undertook  to  furnish  a  home  from  garret  to 
cellar  in  an  artistic  way. 

\Vork  came  and  each  set  himself  to  help  all  the  others. 
From  simply  supplying  designs  for  furniture,  rugs,  car- 
pets and  wall  paper  they  began  to  manufacture  these 
things,  simply  because  they  could  not  buy  or  get  others 
to  make  the  things  they  desired. 

9 


WILLIAM  Morris  undertook  the  entire  executive  charge  of  affairs, 
MORRIS  ¥  and  mastered  the  details  of  half  a  dozen  trades  in  or- 
der that  he  might  intelligently  conduct  the  business. 
The  one  motto  of  the  firm  was  "  Not  how  cheap,  but 
how  good."  They  insisted  that  housekeeping  must  be 
simplified,  and  that  we  should  have  fewer  things  and 
have  them  better.  To  this  end  single  pieces  of  furniture 
M^ere  made  and  all  sets  of  furniture  discarded.  I  have 
seen  several  houses  furnished  entire  by  William  Morris, 
and  the  first  thing  that  impressed  me  was  the  sparsity 
of  things.  Instead  of  a  dozen  pictures  in  a  room  there 
were  two  or  three — one  on  an  easel  and  one  or  two 
on  the  walls.  Gilt  frames  were  abandoned  almost  en- 
tirely and  dark  stained  \voods  were  used  instead. 
Wide  fireplaces  were  introduced  &  mantels  of  solid  oak. 
For  upholstery,  leather  covering  was  generally  used 
instead  of  cloth.  Carpets  were  laid  in  strips,  not  tacked 
down  to  stay,  and  rugs  were  laid  so  as  to  show  a  goodly 
glimpse  of  hard-wood  floor ;  and  in  the  dining  room  a 
large  round  table  was  placed  instead  of  a  right  angle 
square  one.  This  table  was  not  covered  with  a  table- 
cloth ;  mats  or  doilies  being  used  here  and  there.  To 
cover  a  table  entire  with  a  cloth  or  spread,  was  pretty 
good  proof  that  the  piece  of  furniture  was  cheap  and 
shabby  ;  so  in  no  William  Morris  library  or  dining  room 
would  you  find  a  table  entirely  covered.  The  round  din- 
ing table  is  in  very  general  use  now,  but  few  people 
realize  how  its  plainness  was  scouted  when  William 
Morris  first  introduced  it. 
xo 


One  piece  of  William  Morris  furniture  has  become  dc-  WILLIAM 
cidedly  popular  in  America,  and  that  is  the  "  Morris  MORRIS  # 
Chair."  The  first  chair  of  this  pattern  was  made  entirely 
by  the  hands  of  the  master.  It  was  built  by  a  man 
who  understood  anatomy,  unlike  most  chairs  and  all 
church  pew^s.  It  was  also  strong,  durable,  ornamental 
and  by  a  simple  device  the  back  could  be  adjusted  so 
as  to  fit  a  man's  every  mood. 

^  There  has  been  a  sad  degeneracy  among  William 
Morris  chairs ;  still,  good  ones  can  be  obtained,  nearly 
as  excellent  as  the  one  in  which  I  rested  at  Kelmscott 
House — broad,  deep,  massive,  upholstered  with  curled 
hair,  &  covered  with  leather  that  would  delight  a  book- 
binder. Such  a  chair  can  be  used  a  generation  and  then 
passed  on  to  the  heirs. 

Furnishing  of  churches  and  chapels  led  naturally  to 
the  making  of  stained  glass  windows,  &  hardly  a  large 
city  of  Christendom  but  has  an  example  of  the  Morris 
work  V^'v^ 

Morris  managed  to  hold  that  erratic  genius,  Dante 
Gabriel  Rossetti,  in  line  and  direct  his  efforts,  which  of 
itself  was  a  feat  worthy  of  record.  He  made  a  fortune 
for  Rossetti,  who  was  a  child  in  this  world's  affairs, 
and  he  also  made  a  fortune  for  himself  and  every  man 
connected  with  the  concern. 

Burne-Jones  stood  by  the  ship  manfully  and  proved  his 
good  sense  by  never  interfering  with  the  master's  plans, 
or  asking  foolish,  quibbling  questions, — showing  faith 
on  all  occasions. 

zi 


WILLIAM  The  Morris  designs  for  wall  paper,  tapestry,  cretonnes 
MORRIS  ¥  and  carpets  are  now  the  property  of  the  world,  but  to 
say  just  which  is  a  "William  Morris  design  and  which 
a  Burne-Jones  is  an  impossibility,  for  these  two  strong 
men  worked  together  as  one  being  with  two  heads  and 
four  hands.  At  one  time,  I  find  the  firm  of  Morris  &  Co. 
had  three  thousand  hands  employed  in  its  various  man- 
ufactories, the  work  in  most  instances  being  done  by 
hand  and  after  the  manner  of  the  olden  time. 
William  Morris  was  an  avowed  socialist  long  before  so 
many  men  began  to  grow  fond  of  calling  themselves 
Christian  Socialists.  Morris  was  too  practical  not  to 
know  that  the  time  is  not  ripe  for  life  on  a  communal 
basis,  but  in  his  heart  was  a  high  and  holy  idea  that 
he  has  partially  explained  in  his  books,  "  A  Dream 
of  John  Ball,"  and  "  News  from  Nowhere,"  and  more 
fully  in  many  lectures.  His  sympathy  was  ever  with 
the  workingman  and  those  who  grind  fordone  at  the 
wheel  of  labor.  To  better  the  condition  of  the  toiler 
was  his  sincere  desire. 

There  is  one  criticism  that  has  been  constantly  brought 
against  Morris,  and  although  he  answered  this  criticism 
a  thousand  times  during  his  life,  it  still  springs  fresh — 
put  forth  by  little  men  who  congratulate  themselves 
on  having  scored  a  point. 

They  ask  in  orotund,  '*  How  could  W^illiam  Morris  ex- 
pecSl  to  benefit  society  at  large,  when  all  of  the  prod- 
ucts he  manufactured  were  so  high  in  price  that  only 
the  rich  could  buy  them  ?  " 

12 


Socialism,  according  to  William  Morris,  does  not  con-  WILLIAM 
sider  it  desirable  to  supply  cheap  stuffto  anybody.  The  MORRIS  ¥ 
socialist  aims  to  make  every  manufactured  article  of 
the  best  quality  possible.  It  is  not  how  cheap  can  this 
be  made  but  how  good.  Make  it  as  excellent  as  it  can 
be  made  to  serve  its  end.  Then  sell  it  at  a  price  that 
affords  something  more  than  a  bare  existence  to  the 
w^orkmen  who  put  their  lives  into  its  formation.  In 
this  way  you  raise  the  status  of  the  worker — you  pay 
him  for  his  labor  and  give  him  an  interest  and  pride  in 
the  product.  Cheap  products  make  cheap  men.  The  first 
thought  of  socialism  is  for  the  worker  who  makes  the 
thing,  not  the  man  who  buys  it. 

And  so  I  will  answer  the  questions  of  the  critics  as  to 
how  society  has  been  benefited  by,  say,  a  William 
Morris  book : 

I. — The  workmen  who  made  it  found  a  pride  and  sat- 
isfaction in  their  work. 

2. — They  received  a  goodly  reward  in  cash  for  their 
time  and  efforts. 

3. — The  buyers  were  pleased  with  their  purchase,  and 
received  a  decided  satisfaction  in  its  possession. 
4. — Readers  of  the  book  were   gratified   to  see   their 
author  clothed  in  such  fitting  and  harmonious  dress. 
5. — Reading  the  text  has  instru<5\ed  some  ;  and  possibly 
inspired  a  few  to  nobler  thinking. 

After  "The  Defense  of  Guinevere"  was  published,  it 
was  thirteen  years  before  Morris  issued  another  vol- 
ume. His  days  had  been  given  to  art  and  the  work  of 

13 


WILLIAM  management.  But  now  the  business  had  gotten  on  to 
MORRIS  1»  such  a  firm  basis  that  he  turned  the  immediate  super- 
vision over  to  others  and  took  two  days  of  the  week, 
Saturday  and  Sunday,  for  literature. 
Taking  up  the  active  work  of  literature  when  thirty- 
seven  years  of  age,  he  followed  it  with  the  zest  of  youth 
for  twenty  years— until  death  claimed  him. 
William  Morris  thought  literature  should  be  the  prod- 
uct of  the  ripened  mind — the   mind   that   knows   the 
world  of  men  &  which  has  grappled  with  earth's  prob- 
lems ;  and  in  this  he  had  the  strong  corroboration  of 
several  philosophers.  He  also  considered  that  letters 
should  not  be  a  profession  in  itself — to  make  a  business 
of  an  art  is  to  degrade  it.  Literature  should  be  the  spon- 
taneous output  of  the  mind  that  has  known  and  felt.  To 
work  the  mine  of  spirit  as  a  business  and  sift  its  prod- 
uct for  hire,  is  to  overwork  the  vein  and  palm  off  slag 
for  useful  metal.  Shakespeare  w^as  a  theatre  manager, 
Milton  a  secretary,  Bobby  Burns  a  farmer,   Lamb  a 
book-keeper,    Wordsworth   a   government   employee, 
Emerson  a  lecturer,  Hawthorne  a  custom-house  in- 
spector &  \^^hitman  a  clerk  i^  William  Morris  -was  a 
workingman   and   manufacturer, — and   would 
have  been  Poet  Laureate  of  England  had 
he  been  willing  to  call  himself  a  student 
of  sociology  instead  of  a  socialist. 
Socialism  itself  (whatever  it 
may  be)  is  not  offensive 
— the  word  is. 
14 


NCE  upon  a  daythe  great  Amer- 
ican Apostle  of  Negation  ex- 
pressed a  regret  that  he  had  not 
been  consulted  when  the  Uni- 
verse was  being  planned,  other- 
wise he  would  have  arranged  to 
make  good  things  catching  in- 
stead of  bad. 

The  remark  tokened  a  slight  le- 
sion in  the  logic  of  the  Apostle, 
for  good  things  are  now^,  &  ever  have  been,  infectious. 
1^  Once  upon  a  day,  I  met  a  young  man  who  told  me 
that  he  was  exposed  at  Kelmscott  House  for  a  brief 
hour,  and  caught  it,  and  ever  after  there  were  in  his 
mind,  thoughts,  feelings,  emotions  and  ideals  that  were 
not  there  before.  Possibly  the  psychologist  would  ex- 
plain that  the  spores  of  all  these  things  were  simply 
sleeping,  awaiting  the  warmth  and  sunshine  of  some 
peculiar  presence  to  start  them  into  being,  but  of  that 
I  cannot  speak — this  only  I  know,  that  the  young  man 
said  to  me,  "  Whereas  I  was  once  blind,  I  now  see." 
i^  William  Morris  was  a  giant  in  physical  strength  and 
a  giant  in  intellect.  His  nature  was  intensely  mascu- 
line in  that  he  could  plan  and  a(5t  without  thought  of 
precedent.  Never  was  a  man  more  emancipated  from 
the  trammels  of  convention  and  custom  than  William 
Morris  O^^s^ 

Kelmscott   House  at  Hammersmith  is  in  an  ebb-tide 
district  where  once  wealth  and  fashion  held  sway ;  but 

15 


WILLIAM 
MORRIS  %» 


WILLIAM   now  the  vicinity  is  given  over  to  factories,  tenement 
MORRIS  ¥  houses  and  all  that  train  of  evil  and  vice  that  follow  in 
the  wake  of  faded  gentility. 

At  Hammersmith  you  will  see  spacious  old  mansions 
used  as  warehouses  ;  others  as  boarding  houses  ;  still 
others  converted  into  dance  halls  with  beer  gardens  in 
the  rear,  where  once  bloomed  and  blossomed  milady's 
flower  beds. 

The  broad  stone  steps  and  w^ide  hallways  and  iron 
fences,  with  glimpses  now  and  then  of  ancient  door- 
plates  or  more  ancient  knockers,  tell  of  generations 
turned  to  dust. 

Just  why  William  Morris,  the  poet  and  lover  of  har- 
mony, should  have  selected  this  locality  for  a  home  is 
quite  beyond  the  average  ken.  Certainly  it  mystified  the 
fashionable  literary  world  of  London  with  whom  he 
never  kept  goose-step,  but  that  still  kept  track  of  him — 
for  fashion  has  a  way  of  patronizing  genius — and  some 
of  his  old  friends  wrote  him  asking  where  Hammer- 
smith was,&  others  expressed  doubts  as  to  its  existence. 
I  had  no  difficulty  in  taking  the  right  train  for  Ham- 
mersmith, but  once  there,  no  one  seemed  to  have  ever 
heard  of  the  Kelmscott  Press.  When  I  inquired,  grave 
misgivings  seemed  to  arise  as  to  whether  the  press  re- 
ferred to  was  a  cider  press,  a  wine  press  or  a  press 
for  "  cracklings." 

Finally  I  discovered  a  man — a  workingman — whose 
face  beamed  at  the  mention  of  W^illiam  Morris.  Later 
I  found  that  if  a  man  knew  William  Morris,  his  heart 
j6 


throbbed  at  the  mention  of  his  name,  and  he  at  once  WILLIAM 
grew  voluble  and  confidential  and  friendly.  It  was  the   MORRIS  ¥ 
"  Open  Sesame."  And  if  a  person  did  not  know  Will- 
iam Morris,  he  simply  did  n't,  and  that  was  all  there 
was  about  it. 

But  the  man  I  met  knew  "  Th'  Ole  Man,"  which  was 
the  affedlionate  title  used  by  all  the  hundreds  and 
thousands  who  worked  with  William  Morris.  And  to 
prove  that  he  knew  him,  when  I  asked  that  he  should 
direct  me  to  the  Upper  Mall,  he  simply  insisted  on  go- 
ing with  me.  Moreover,  he  told  a  needless  lie  and  de- 
clared he  was  on  his  way  there,  although  when  we  met 
he  was  headed  in  the  other  direction  i^  By  a  devious 
walk  of  half  a  mile  we  reached  the  high  iron  fence  of 
Kelmscott  House.  We  arrived  amid  a  florid  description 
of  the  Icelandic  Sagas  as  told  by  my  new-found  friend 
and  interpreted  by  the  Th'  Ole  Man.  My  friend  had  not 
read  the  Sagas,  but  still  he  recommended  them  ;  and  so 
we  passed  through  the  wide  open  gates  &  up  the  stone 
^valk  to  the  entrance  of  Kelmscott  House. 
On  the  threshold  we  met  Mr.  F.  S.  Ellis  &  Mr.  Emery 
Walker,  who  addressed  my  companion  as  "Tom."  I 
knew  Mr.  Ellis  slightly  and  also  had  met  Mr.  Walker, 
who  works  Rembrandt  miracles  with  a  camera. 
Mr.  Ellis  was  deep  in  seeing  the  famous  "  Chaucer  " 
through  the  press,  &  Mr.  Walker  had  a  print  to  show, 
so  we  turned  aside,  past  a  great  pile  of  paper  in  crates 
that  cluttered  the  hallway,  and  entered  the  library. 
There,  leaning  over  the  long,  oaken  table,  in  shirt- 

17 


WILLIAM  sleeves,  was  the  master.  Who  could  mistake  that  great 
MORRIS  ¥  shaggy  head,  the  tangled  beard,  and  frank,  open-eyed 
look  of  boyish  animation  ? 

The  man  was  sixty  and  more,  but  there  was  no  ap- 
pearance of  age  in  eye,  complexion,  form  or  gesture — 
only  the  whitened  hair !  He  greeted  me  as  if  we  always 
had  known  each  other,  and  Ellis  and  piles  of  Chaucer 
proof  led  straight  to  Professor  Child  of  Harvard, 
whose  work  Ellis  criticised  and  Morris  upheld.  They 
fell  into  a  hot  argument,  which  was  even  continued  as 
we  walked  across  the  street  to  the  Doves  Bindery  ^ 
The  Doves  Bindery,  as  all  good  men  know,  is  man- 
aged by  Mr.  Cobden-Sanderson,  who  married  one  of 
the  two  daughters  of  Richard  Cobden  of  Corn-Law 
fame  >^^^ 

Just  why  Mr.  Sanderson,  the  lawyer,  should  have  bor- 
rowed his  wife's  maiden  name  and  made  it  legally  a 
part  of  his  own,  I  do  not  know.  Anyway  I  quite  like 
the  idea  of  linking  one's  name  with  that  of  the  woman 
he  loves,  especially  when  it  has  been  so  honored  by 
the  possessor  as  the  name  of  Cobden. 
Cobden-Sanderson  caught  the  rage  for  beauty  from 
William  Morris,  and  began  to  bind  books  for  his  own 
pleasure.  Morris  contended  that  any  man  who  could 
bind  books  as  beautifully  as  Cobden-Sanderson  should 
not  waste  his  time  with  law.  Cobden-Sanderson  talked 
it  over  with  his  wife,  and  she  being  a  most  sensible 
woman  agreed  with  William  Morris.  So  Cobden-San- 
derson, acting  on  the  suggestion  of  Th'  Ole  Man,  rent- 
x8 


cd  the  time-mellowed  mansion  next  door  to  the  old  WILLIAM 
house  occupied  by  the  Kelmscott  Press  and  went  to  MORRIS  ^ 
work  binding  books. 

When  we  were  once  inside  of  the  Bindery,  the  Chau- 
cerian argument  between  Mr.  Ellis  and  Th'  Ole  Man 
shifted  off  into  a  wrangle  with  Cobden-Sanderson. 
I  could  not  get  the  drift  of  it  exactly — it  seemed  to  be 
the  continuation  of  some  former  quarrel,  about  an  oak 
leaf  or  something.  Anyway,  Th'  Ole  Man  silenced  his 
opponent  by  smothering  his  batteries — all  of  which 
will  be  better  understood  when  I  explain  that  Th'  Ole 
Man  was  large  in  stature,  bluff,  bold  &  strong-voiced, 
whereas  Cobden-Sanderson  is  small,  red-headed,  meek, 
and  wears  bicycle  trousers. 

The  argument,  however,  was  not  quite  so  serious  an 
affair  as  I  at  first  supposed,  for  it  all  ended  in  a  laugh 
and  easily  ran  off  into  a  quiet  debate  as  to  the  value  of 
Imperial  Japan  vs.  ^Vhatman. 

We  walked  through  the  various  old  parlors  that  now 
do  duty  as  workrooms  for  bright-eyed  girls,  then  over 
through  the  Kelmscott  Press,  and  from  this  to  another 
old  mansion  that  had  on  its  door  a  brass  plate  so  pol- 
ished and  repolished,  like  a  machine-made  sonnet  too 
much  gone  over,  that  one  can  scarcely  make  out  its 
intent.  Finally  I  managed  to  trace  the  legend,  "  The 
Seasons."  I  was  told  it  was  here  that  Thomson,  the 
poet,  wrote  his  book  ^  Once  back  in  the  library  of 
Kelmscott  House,  Mr.  Ellis  and  Th'  Ole  Man  leaned 
over  the  great  oaken  table  and  renewed,  in  a  gentler 

19 


\VILLIAM  key,  the  question  as  to  whether  Professor  Child  was 
MORRIS  ¥  justified  in  his  construction  of  the  Third  Canto  of  the 
"  Canterbury  Tales."  Under  cover  of  the  smoke  I  quiet- 
ly disappeared  with  Mr.  Cockerill,  the  Secretary,  for 
a  better  view  of  the  Kelmscott  Press. 
This  was  my  first  interview  with  William  Morris.  By 
chance  I  met  him  once  again  for  a  few^  moments,  some 
days  after,  at  the  shop  of  Emery  Walker  in  Clifford 
Court,  Strand.  I  had  been  told  on  divers  occasions  by 
various  persons  that  W^illiam  Morris  had  no  sympathy 
for  American  art  and  small  respe(5t  for  our  literature. 
I  am  sure  this  was  not  wholly  true,  for  on  this  occa- 
sion he  told  me  he  had  read  "  Huckleberry  Finn,"  and 
doted  on  '*  Uncle  Remus."  He  also  spoke  with  af- 
fe<5tion   and   feeling   of  Walt  Whitman,  and 
told  me  that  he  had  read  every  printed 
word  that  Emerson  had  written.  And 
further  he  congratulated  me  on 
the  success  of  my  book, 
"  Songs  from  Vaga- 
bo  ndia." 


20 


HE  housekeeping  world  seems  TVILLIAM 
to  have  been  in  thrall  to  six  hair-  MORRIS  ¥ 
cloth  chairs,  a  slippery  sofa  to 
match,  &  a  very  cold,  marble- 
top  center  table,  from  the  be- 
ginning of  this  century  down  to 
comparatively  recent  times. 
In  all  the  best  homes  there  was 
also  a  marble  mantel  to  match 
the  center  table  ;  on  one  end  of 
this  mantel  was  a  blue  glass  vase  containing  a  bouquet 
of  paper  roses,  and  on  the  other  a  plaster-Paris  cat. 
Above  the  mantel  hung  a  wreath  of  wax  flowers  in  a 
glass  case  t^  In  such  houses  were  usually  to  be  seen 
gaudy-colored  carpets,  imitation  lace  curtains,  and  a 
what-not  in  the  corner  that  seemed  ready  to  go  into 
dissolution  through  the  law  of  gravitation. 
i^  Early  in  the  seventies  lithograph  presses  began  to 
make  chromos  that  were  warranted  just  as  good  as  oil 
paintings,  and  these  were  distributed  in  millions  by  en- 
terprising newspapers  as  premiums  for  subscriptions. 
Looking  over  an  old  file  of  the  "Christian  Union" 
for  the  year  187 1,  I  chanced  upon  an  editorial  wherein 
it  was  stated  that  the  end  of  painting  pidtures  by 
hand  had  come,  and  the  writer  piously  thanked  heaven 
for  it — &  added,  "  Art  is  now  within  the  reach  of  all." 
Furniture,  carpets,  curtains,  pictures  and  books  were 
being  manufa<5tured  by  machinery,  and  to  glue  things 
together  and  give  them  a  look  of  gentility  and  get  them 

2Z 


WILLIAM  into  a  house  before  they  fell  apart,  was  the  seeming 

MORRIS  1*   desideratum  of  all  manufa<5\urers. 

The  editor  of  the  "Christian  Union"  surely  had  a 
basis  of  truth  for  his  statement ;  art  had  received  a 
sudden  chill :  palettes  and  brushes  could  be  bought  for 
half-price,  and  many  artists  were  making  five-year 
contra<5ts  with  lithographers ;  while  those  too  old  to 
learn  to  draw  on  lithograph  stones  saw  nothing  left  for 
them  but  to  work  designs  with  worsted  in  perforated 
cardboard. 

To  the  influence  of  William  Morris  does  the  civilized 
world  owe  its  salvation  from  the  mad  rage  &  rush  for 
the  tawdry  and  cheap  in  home  decoration.  It  will  not 
do  to  say  that  if  W^illiam  Morris  had  not  called  a  halt 
some  one  else  would,  nor  to  cavil  by  declaring  that 
the  inanities  of  the  Plush-Covered-Age  followed  the 
Era  of  the  Hair-Cloth  Sofa.  These  things  are  frankly 
admitted,  but  the  refreshing  fact  remains  that  fully 
one-half  the  homes  of  England  &  America  have  been 
influenced  by  the  good  taste  and  vivid  personality  of 
one  strong,  earnest  man. 

William  Morris  was  the  strongest  all  'round  man  the 
century  has  produced.  He  was  an  Artist  and  a  Poet  in 
the  broadest  and  best  sense  of  these  much  bandied 
terms.  William  Morris  could  do  more  things,  and  do 
them  well,  than  any  man  of  either  ancient  or  modern 
times  whom  we  can  name. 

1^  In  a  magazine  article,  a  short  time  ago,  I  saw  Mr. 
Hopkinson  Smith  referred   to  as  "the  Leonardo  da 

22 


Vinci  of  America,"  and  the  article  in  question,  I  do  WILLIAM 
not  believe  was  written  by  Mr.  Smith,  either.  MORRIS  ♦ 

Mr.  Hopkinson  Smith  is  a  talented  man,  and  I  surely 
would  not  decry  his  various  gifts.  He  is  a  writer,  an 
artist,  an  orator  and  a  civil  engineer.  He  is  eminently 
sane,  possesses  common  sense  plus,  and  always  has 
one  eye  well  fixed  on  the  Main  Chance.  He  is  practi- 
cal. Mr.  Smith  is  not  a  college  man,  and  when  in  1894 
he  gave  a  course  of  le<5tures  at  Harvard,  the  throngs 
that  crowded  Sanders  Theater  to  its  utmost  limit,  tes- 
tified to  the  fa<5l  that  of  Harvard's  three  hundred  pro- 
fessors &  teachers,  not  one  could  match  this  lighthouse 
builder  in  point  of  personality. 

However,  the  Plutarch  who  writes  the  parallel  lives 
of  Hopkinson  Smith  and  William  Morris  will  place  the 
American  at  a  great  disadvantage.  William  Morris 
could  do  everything  that  Smith  can,  even  to  building 
a  Race  Rock  Light,  and  beside  this,  was  master  of 
six  trades.  He  was  a  weaver,  a  blacksmith,  a  wood- 
carver,  a  painter,  a  dyer  and  a  printer.  And  he  was  a 
musical  composer  of  no  mean  ability. 
Better  than  all,  he  was  an  enthusiastic  lover  of  his 
race  :  his  heart  throbbed  for  humanity,  and  believing 
that  society  could  be  reformed  only  from  below,  he 
cast  his  lot  with  the  toilers,  dressed  as  one  of  them,  & 
in  the  companionship  of  workingmen  found  a  response 
to  his  holy  zeal  which  the  society  of  an  entailed  aris- 
tocracy denied. 

The  man  who  could  influence  the  entire  housekeeping 

23 


WILLIAM   of  half  a  world,  and  give  the  kingdom  of  fashion  a  list 
MORRIS  ¥  to  starboard ;  who  could  paint  beautiful  pi<5^ures ;  com- 
pose music ;  speak  four  languages ;  write  sublime  verse  ; 
address  a  public  assemblage  effectively ;  produce 
plays ;  resurrecfl  the  lost  art  of  making  books 
— books  such  as  were  made  only  in  the 
olden  time  as  a  loving,  religious  ser- 
vice ;  who  lived  a  clean,  whole- 
some, manly  life — beloved  by 
those  who  knew  him  best 
— shall  we  not  call 
him  Master? 


Robert  Browning 
-n:-n  Photograph  taken  from  life,  in  1870, 
bv  Ernest  Edwards. 


ROBERT  BROWNING 


So,  take  and  use  Thy  work, 

Amend  what  flaws  may  lurk, 

What  strain  o'  the  stuff,  what  warpings  past  the  aim  ! 

My  times  be  in  Thy  hand  ! 

Perfect  the  cup  as  planned  ! 

Let  age  approve  of  youth,  and  death  complete  the  same. 

— Rabbi  Ben  Ezra. 


F  THERE  ever  lived  a  poet  to  whom  ROBERT 
the  best  minds  pour  out  libations,  it  BROWNING 
is  Robert  Browning.  "We  think  of  him 
as  dwelling  on  high  Olympus ;  we 
read  his  lines  by  the  light  of  dim  can- 
dles ;  we  quote  him  in  sonorous  mon- 
otone at  twilight  when  soft-sounding 
organ  chants  come  to  us  mellow  and 
sweet.  Browning's  poems  form  a  lov- 
er's litany  to  that  elect  few  who  hold 
that  the  true  mating  of  a  man  and 
woman  is  the  marriage  of  the  mind. 
And  thrice  blest  was  Browning,  in 
that  fate  allowed  him  to  live  his  phi- 
losophy— to  work  his  poetry  up  into 
life,  and  then  again  transmute  life  & 
love  into  art.  Fate  was  kind:  success 
came  his  way  so  slowly  that  he  was 
never  subjected  to  the  fierce,  daz- 
zling searchlight  of  publicity  :  his  rec- 
ognition in  youth  was  limited  to  a  few 
obscure  friends  and  neighbors.  And 
when  distance  divided  him  from  these, 
they  forgot  him ;  so  there  seems  a 
hiatus  in  his  history,  when  for  a  score 
of  years  literary  England  dimly  re- 
membered some  one  by  the  name  of 
Browning,  but  could  not  just  place 
himdSki^ 

as 


ROBERT  About  the  year  1868  the  author  of  "  Sordello  "  was  in- 
BROWNING  duced  to  appear  at  an  evening  of  "  Uncut  Leaves  "  at 
the  house  of  a  nobleman  at  the  West-End,  London. 
James  Russell  Lowell  was  present  and  was  congratu- 
lated by  a  lady,  sitting  next  to  him,  on  the  fact  that 
Browning  was  an  American. 

1^  "But  only  by  adoption!"  answered  the  gracious 
Lowell. 

**Yes,"  said  the  lady,  **  I  believe  his  father  v^^as  an 
Englishman,  so  you  Americans  cannot  have  all  the 
credit ;  but  surely  he  shows  the  Negro  or  Indian  blood 
of  his  mother — very  clever,  is  n't  he,  so  very  clever!  " 
Browning's  swarthy  complexion,  and  the  fine  poise  of 
the  man — the  entire  absence  of  "nerves,"  as  often 
shown  in  the  savage — seemed  to  carry  out  the  idea 
that  his  was  a  peculiar  pedigree.  In  his  youth,  when 
his  hair  was  as  black  as  the  raven's  wing  and  coarse 
as  a  horse-tail,  and  his  complexion  mahogany,  the  re- 
port that  he  was  a  Creole  found  ready  credence.  And 
so  did  this  gossip  of  mixed  parentage  follow  him,  that 
Mrs.  Sutherland  Orr,  in  her  biography,  takes  an  entire 
chapter  to  prove  that  in  Robert  Browning's  veins  there 
flowed  neither  Indian  nor  Negro  blood. 
1^  Dr.  Furnivall,  however,  explains  that  Browning's 
grandmother  on  his  father's  side  came  from  the  West 
Indies,  that  nothing  is  known  of  her  family  history,  & 
that  she  was  a  Creole. 

And  beyond  this,  the  fact  is  stated  that  Robert  Brown- 
ing was  quite  pleased  when  he  used  to  be  taken  for  a 
26 


Jew, — a  conclusion  made  plausible  by  his  complexion,   ROBERT 
hair  and  features.  BROWNING 

In  its  dead-serious,  hero-worshipping  attitude,  the  life 
of  Robert  Browning  by  Mrs.  Orr  deserves  to  rank  with 
Weems'  "Life  of  ^A^ashington."  It  is  the  brief  of  an 
attorney  for  the  defense.  Little  Willie  anecdotes  appear 
on  every  page. 

And  thus  do  we  behold  the  tendency  to  make  Browning 
something  more  than  a  man — and  therefore  something 
less  r^^ 

Possibly  women  are  given  to  this  sort  of  thing  more 
than  men,  I  am  not  sure ;  but  every  young  woman  re- 
gards her  lover  as  a  distinct  and  peculiar  personage, 
different  from  all  others — as  if  this  were  a  virtue — the 
only  one  of  his  kind.  Later,  if  fate  is  kind,  she  learns 
that  her  own  experience  is  not  unique.  We  all  easily 
fit  into  a  type  and  each  is  but  a  representative  of  his 
class  VMI^ 

Robert  Browning  sprang  from  a  line  of  clerks  &  small 
merchants ;  but  as  mitigation  for  the  lack  of  a  family 
'scutcheon,  we  are  told  that  his  uncle,  Reuben  Brown- 
ing, was  a  truly  poet.  For  once  in  an  idle  hour  he  threw 
off  a  little  thing  for  an  inscription  to  be  placed  on  a  pre- 
sentation ink  bottle,  and  Disraeli  seeing  it,  declared 
"  Nothing  like  this  has  ever  before  been  written  !  "  i^ 
Beyond  doubt,  Disraeli  made  the  statement — it  bears 
his  ear-mark.  It  will  be  remembered  that  the  Earl  of 
Beaconsfield  had  a  stock  form  for  acknowledging  re- 
ceipt of  the  many  books  sent  to  him  by  aspiring  au- 


ROBERT  thors.  It  ran  something  like  this— "  The  Earl  of  Bea- 

BROWNING  consfield  begs  to  thank  the  gifted  author  of for 

a  copy  of  his  book,  and  gives  the  hearty  assurance  that 
he  will  waste  no  time  in  reading  the  volume." 
I0fb  And  further,  the  fact  has  been  explained  that  Robert 
Browning  was  entrusted  with  a  latch-key  early  in  life, 
and  that  he  always  gave  his  mother  a  good-night  kiss. 
He  gave  her  the  good-night  kiss  willy-nilly.  If  she  had 
retired  when  he  came  home,  he  used  the  trusty  latch- 
key and  went  to  her  room  to  imprint  on  her  lips  the 
good-night  kiss.  He  did  this,  the  biographer  would 
have  us  believe,  so  to  convince  the  good  mother  that 
his  breath  was  what  it  should  be,  and  he  awakened 
her  so  she  would  know  the  hour  was  reasonable. 
In  most  manufactories  there  is  an  electric  apparatus 
wherewith  every  employee  registers  when  he  arrives, 
by  turning  a  key  or  pushing  a  button.  Robert  Browning 
always  fearlessly  registered  as  soon  as  he  got  home — 
this  according  to  Mrs.  Orr. 

Unfortunately,  or  otherwise,  there  is  a  little  scattered 
information  which  makes  us  believe  that  Robert 
Browning's  mother  was  not  so  fearful  of  her  son's  con- 
duct, nor  suspicious  as  to  his  breath,  as  to  lie  awake 
nights  and  keep  tab  on  his  hours.  The  world  has  never 
denied  that  Robert  Browning  was  entrusted  with  a 
latch-key,  and  it  little  cares  if  occasionally,  early  in 
life,  he  fumbled  for  the  key-hole.  And  my  conception 
of  his  character  is  that  when  in  the  few  instances  Au- 
rora, rosy  goddess  of  the  morn,  marked  his  home- 
28 


coming  with  glowing  chrome-red  in  the  eastern  sky,   ROBERT 
he  did  not  search  the  sleeping  rooms  for  his  mother  to   BROWNING 
apprise  her  of  the  hour. 

In  one  place  Mrs.  Orr  avers,  in  a  voice  hushed  \vith 
emotion,  that  Browning  carefully  read  all  of  Johnson's 
Dictionary  "  as  fit  preparation  for  a  literary  career." 
i^  W^ithout  any  attempt  to  deny  that  the  perusal  of  a 
dictionary  is  "fit  preparation  for  a  literary  career,"  I 
yet  fear  me  that  the  learned  biographer,  in  a  warm 
anxiety  to  prove  the  man  exceeding  studious  and  very 
virtuous,  has  tipped  a  bit  to  t'  other  side. 
She  has  apotheosized  her  subject — and  in  an  attempt 
to  portray  him  as  a  peculiar  person,  set  apart,  has  well 
nigh  given  us  a  being  without  hands,  feet,  eyes,  ears, 
organs,  dimensions,  passions. 

But  after  a  careful  study  of  the  data,  various  visits  to 

the  places  where  he  lived  in  England,  trips  to  Casa 

Guidi,  views  from  Casa  Guidi  windows,  a  journey  to 

Rezzonico  Palace  at  Venice  where  he  died,  and 

many  a  pious  pilgrimage  to  Poets*  Corner,  in 

Westminster  Abbey,  where  he  sleeps,  I 

am  constrained  to  believe  that  Robert 

Browning  was  made  from  the  same 

kind  of  clay  as  the  rest  of  us. 

He  ^vas  human — he  was 

splendidly  human. 


ROBERT 
BROWNING 


REAT  men  never  come  singly. 
The  year  1812  should  be  as  easy 
to  remember  as  1492,  for  in  it 
were  born  Abraham  Lincoln, 
Charles  Darwin,  Alfred  Tenny- 
son and  Robert  Browning. 
Browning's  father  was  a  bank 
clerk  ;  &  Robert  Browning,  3rd, 
author  of  "  Paracelsus,"  could 
have  secured  his  father's  place 
in  the  Bank  of  England,  if  he  had  had  ambitions.  And 
the  fact  that  he  did  not  was  a  source  of  silent  sorrow 
to  the  father,  even  to  the  day  of  his  death  in  1866. 
Robert  Browning,  the  grandfather,  entered  the  Bank  as 
an  errand  boy,  and  rose  by  slow  stages  to  Principal  of 
the  Stock  Room.  He  served  the  Bank  full  half  a  cen- 
tury, and  saved  from  his  salary  a  goodly  competence. 
This  money,  tightly  and  rightly  invested,  passed  to  his 
son.  The  son  never  reached  the  complete  favor  of  his 
employers  that  the  father  had  known,  but  he  added  to 
his  weekly  stipend  by  what  a  writer  terms,  "  legiti- 
mate perquisites."  This,  being  literally  interpreted, 
means  that  he  purchased  paper,  pens  and  sealing  wax 
for  the  use  of  the  Bank,  and  charged  the  goods  in  at 
his  own  price,  doubtless  with  the  consent  of  his  super- 
ior, with  whom  he  divided  profits.  He  could  have  par- 
odied the  song- writer  of  old  and  said,  "  Let  me  supply 
the  perquisite-requisites  and  I  care  not  who  makes 
the  laws."  ^  So  he  grew  rich — moderately  rich — and 
30 


lived  simply  and  comfortably  up  at  Camberwell,  with  ROBERT 
only  one  besetting  dissipation  :  he  was  a  book-collector.  BROWNING 
He  searched  book-stalls  on  the  way  to  the  City  in  the 
morning,  and  lay  in  wait  for  First  Editions  on  the  way 
home  at  night.  When  he  had  a  holiday,  he  went  in 
search  of  a  book.  He  sneaked  books  into  the  house,  and 
declared  to  his  admonishing  wife  the  next  week  that 
he  had  always  owned  'em,  or  that  they  were  presented 
to  him.  The  funds  his  father  had  left  him,  his  salary 
and  "the  perquisites,"  made  a  goodly  income,  but  he 
always  complained  of  poverty.  He  was  secretly  hoard- 
ing sums  so  to  secure  certain  books. 
The  shelves  grew  until  they  reached  the  ceiling,  and 
then  book-cases  invaded  the  dining  room.  The  collect- 
or didn't  trust  his  wife  with  the  household  purchasing ; 
no  bank  clerk  ever  does,  for  women  are  not  financiers 
— and  all  the  pennies  were  needed  for  books.  The  good 
wife,  having  nothing  else  to  do,  grew  anaemic,  had  neu- 
ralgia and  lapsed  into  a  Shut-In,  wearing  a  pale  blue 
wrapper  and  reclining  on  a  couch,  around  which  were 
piled — mountain  high — books. 

The  pale  invalid  used  to  imagine  that  the  gfreat  cases 
were  swaying  and  dancing  a  minuet,  and  she  fully  ex- 
pected the  tomes  would  all  come  a-toppling  down  and 
smother  her — and  she  didn't  care  much  if  they  would, 
but  they  never  did.  She  was  the  mother  of  two  chil- 
dren— the  boy  Robert,  born  the  year  after  her  marriage  ; 
and  in  a  little  over  another  year  a  daughter  came,  and 
this  closed  the  family  record. 

3» 


ROBERT  The  invalid  mother  was  a  woman  of  fine  feeling  and 
BROWNING  much  poetic  insight.  She  did  n't  talk  as  much  about 
books  as  her  husband  did,  but  I  think  she  knew  the 
good  ones  better.  The  mother  and  son  moused  in  books 
together,  and  Mrs.  Orr  is  surely  right  in  her  suggestion 
that  this  love  of  mother  and  son  took  upon  itself  the 
nature  of  a  passion. 

The  love  of  Robert  Browning  for  Elizabeth  Barrett 
was  a  revival  and  a  renewal,  in  many  ways,  of  the  con- 
dition of  tenderness  and  sympathy  that  existed  between 
himself  and  his  mother.  There  certainly  was  a  strange 
and  marked  resemblance  in  the  characters  of  Elizabeth 
Barrett  &  the  mother  of  Robert  Browning ;  &  to  many 
this  fully  accounts  for  the  instant  affection  that  Brown- 
ing felt  toward  the  occupant  of  **  the  darkened  room," 
when  first  they  met. 

The  book-collector  took  much  pride  in  his  boy,  and  used 
to  take  him  on  book-hunting  excursions,  and  sometimes 
to  the  Bank,  on  which  occasions  he  would  tell  the  Beef- 
Eaters  how  this  ^vas  Robert  Browning,  3rd,  and  that 
all  three  of  the  R.  B.'s  were  loyal  servants  of  the  Bank. 
And  the  Beef-Eaters  would  rest  their  staves  on  the  stone 
floor,  and  smile  Fifteenth  Century  grimaces  at  the  boy 
from  under  their  cocked  hats. 

Robert,  3rd,  was  a  healthy,  rollicking  lad,  with  power 
plus,  and  a  deal  of  destructiveness  in  his  nature.  But 
destructiveness  in  a  youngster  is  only  energy  not  yet 
properly  directed,  just  as  dirt  is  useful  matter  in  the 
wrong  place. 
3a 


To  keep  the  boy  out  of  mischief,  he  was  sent  to  a  sort  ROBERT 
of  kindergarten,  kept  by  a  spinster  around  the  corner.   BROWNING 
The   spinster   devoted  rather  more   attention   to  the 
Browning  boy  than  to  her  other  pupils — she  had  to,  to 
keep  him  out  of  mischief — and  soon  the  boy  was  quite 
the  head  scholar. 

And  they  tell  us  that  he  was  so  much  more  clever  than 
any  of  the  other  scholars  that  to  appease  the  rising 
jealousy  of  the  parents  of  the  other  pupils,  the  diplo- 
matic spinster  requested  that  the  boy  be  removed  from 
her  school — all  this  according  to  the  earnest  biographer. 
The  facts  are  that  the  boy  had  so  much  energy  &  rest- 
less ambition ;  was  so  full  of  brimming  curiosity, 
mischief  and  imagination — introducing  turtles,  bats 
and  mice  on  various  occasions — that  he  led  the  whole 
school  a  merry  chase  and  wore  the  nerves  of  the  an- 
cient maiden  to  a  frazzle. 
He  had  to  go. 

1^  After  this  he  studied  at  home  with  his  mother.  His 
father  laid  out  a  schedule,  and  it  was  lived  up  to,  for 
about  a  week. 

Then  a  private  tutor  was  tried,  but  soon  this  plan  was 
abandoned,  and  a  system  of  reading,  best  described  as 
"  natural  selection,"  was  followed. 
The  boy  was  fourteen,  and  his  sister  was  twelve,  past. 
These  are  the  ages  when  children  often  experience  a 
change  of  heart,  as  all  "revivalists"  know.  Robert 
Browning  was  swinging  off  toward  atheism.  He  grew 
melancholy,  irritable  and  wrote  stanzas  of  sentimental 

33 


ROBERT  verse.  He  showed  this  vefse,  high-sounding,  stilted, 
BROWNING  bold  and  bilious,  to  his  mother  and  then  to  his  father, 
and  finally  to  Lizzie  Flower. 

A  word  about  Lizzie  Flower :  she  was  nine  years  old- 
er than  Robert  Browning  ;  and  she  had  a  mind  that  was 
gracious  and  full  of  high  aspiration.  She  loved  books, 
art,  music,  and  all  harmony  made  its  appeal  to  her ;  and 
not  in  vain.  She  wrote  verses  and  kept  them  locked  in 
her  work-box ;  and  then  she  painted  in  water  colors  and 
worked  in  worsted.  A  thoroughly  good  woman,  she 
was,  far  above  the  average,  with  a  half  minor  key  in 
her  voice  and  a  tinge  of  the  heart-broken  in  her  com- 
position, caused  no  one  just  knew  how.  Probably  a  cer- 
tain young  curate  at  St.  Margaret's  could  have  revealed 
light  along  this  line,  but  he  married,  evolved  a  double 
chin,  moved  away  to  a  fat  living,  and  never  told. 
No  woman  is  either  wise  or  good  until  destiny  has 
subdued  her  by  grinding  her  fondest  hopes  into  the  dust. 
Lizzie  Flower  was  wise  and  good. 
She  gave  singing  lessons  to  the  Browning  children. 
She  taught  Master  Robert  Browning  to  draw. 
She  read  to  him  some  of  her  verses  that  were  in  the 
sewing  table  drawer.  And  her  sister,  Sarah  Flower,  two 
years  older,  afterwards  Sarah  Flower  Adams,  read 
aloud  to  them  a  hymn  she  had  just  written,  called 
♦'  Nearer  my  God  to  Thee." 

Then  soon  Master  Robert  took  the  Flower  girls  some 
of  the  verses  he  had  written. 

Robert  liked  Lizzie  Flower  first-rate,  &  told  his  mother 
34 


so  i^b  A  young  woman  never  cares  anything  for  an  un-   ROBERT 
licked  cub,  nine  years  younger  than  herself,  unless  fate  BROWNING 
has  played  pitch  and  toss  with  her  heart's  true  love. 
And  then,  the  tendrils  of  the  affections  being  ruthlessly 
lacerated  &  uprooted,  they  cling  to  the  first  object  that 
presents  itself  ^^^ 

Lizzie  Flower  was  a  wall-flower.  That  is  to  say,  she 
had  early  in  life  rid  herself  of  the  admiration  of  the 
many,  by  refusing  to  supply  an  unlimited  amount  of 
small  talk.  In  feature,  she  was  as  plain  as  George  Eliot. 
A  boy  is  plastic,  and  even  a  modest  wall-flower  can 
woo  him ;  but  a  man,  for  her,  inspires  awe — with  him 
she  takes  no  liberties.  And  the  wall-flower  wooes  the 
youth  unwittingly,  thinking  the  while  she  is  only  using 
her  influence  to  better  instruct  him. 
It  is  fortunate  for  a  boy  escaping  adolescence  to  be  ed- 
ucated &  loved  (the  words  are  synonymous)  by  a  good 
woman,  and  the  youngster  who  has  not  violently  loved 
a  woman  old  enough  to  be  his  mother,  has  dropped 
something  out  of  his  life  that  he  will  have  to  go  back 
and  pick  up  in  another  incarnation. 
I  said  Robert  liked  Lizzie  Flower  first-rate  ;  and  she 
declared  that  he  was  the  brightest  and  most  receptive 
pupil  she  ever  had. 

He  was  seventeen — she  was  twenty-six.  They  read 
Shelley,  Keats  and  Byron  aloud,  and  together  passed 
through  the  "  Byronic  Period."  They  became  violently 
atheistic,  &  at  the  same  time  decidedly  religious,  things 
that  seem  paradoxical  but  are  not.  A  vegetable  diet  was 

35 


ROBERT  adopted  and  for  two  years  they  eschewed  meat.  They 

BROWNING  worshipped  in  the  woods,  feeling  that  the  groves  were 

God's  first  temples,  and  sitting  at  the  gnarled  roots  of 

some  great  oak  they  would  read  aloud,  by  turn,  from 

"Queen  Mab." 

And  it  was  on  one  such  excursion  out  across  Hamp- 
stead  Heath  they  lost  their  copy  of  "  Shelley  "  in  the 
leaves,  &  a  wit  has  told  us  that  it  sprouted,  &  as  a  re- 
sult— the  flower  and  fruit — we  have  Browning's  poem 
of  "  Pauline."  And  this  must  be  so,  for  Robert  &  Miss 
Flower,  (he  always  called  her  "  Miss  Flower,"  but  she 
called  him  "Robert")  made  many  an  excursion,  in 
search  of  the  book,  yet  they  never  found  it. 
Robert  now  being  eighteen,  a  man  grown,  not  large  but 
very  strong  and  wiry,  his  father  made  arrangements  for 
him  to  take  a  minor  clerkship  in  the  Bank.  But  the  boy 
rebelled — he  was  going  to  be  an  artist,  or  a  poet — or 
something  like  that. 

The  father  argued  that  a  man  could  be  a  poet  and  still 
work  in  a  bank — the  salary  was  handy ;  and  there  was 
no  money  in  poetry.  In  fact,  he  himself  was  a  poet,  as 
his  father  had  been  before  him.  To  be  a  bank  clerk  and 
at  the  same  time  a  poet — what  nobler  ambition  ! 
The  young  man  was  still  stubborn.  He  was  feeling  dis- 
contented with  his  environment :  he  was  cramped,  cab- 
ined, cribbed,  confined.  He  wanted  to  get  out  of  the 
world  of  petty  plodding  and  away  from  the  silly  round 
of  conventions,  out  into  the  world  of  art — or  else  of 
barbarism — he  did  n't  care  which. 
36 


The  latter  way  opened  first,  and  a  bit  of  wordy  war-  ROBERT 
fare  with  his  father  on  the  subject  of  idleness  sent  BROW^NING 
him  off  to  a  gipsy  camp  at  Epsom  Downs.  How  long  he 
lived  with  the  vagabonds  we  do  not  know,  but  his 
swarthy  skin,  and  his  skill  as  a  boxer  and  wrestler,  rec- 
ommended him  to  the  ragged  gentry  and  they  received 
him  as  a  brother. 

It  is  probable  that  a  week  of  pure  vagabondia  cured 
him  of  the  idea  that  civilization  is  a  disease,  for  he 
came  back  home,  made  a  bonfire  of  his  attire,  &  after 
bathing  well,  was  clothed  in  his  right  mind. 
Groggy  studies  in  French  under  a  private  tutor  followed, 
and  then  came  a  term  as  a  special  student  in  Greek  at 
London  University. 

1^  To  be  nearer  the  school,  he  took  lodgings  in  Gower 
Street ;  and  within  a  week  a  slight  rough-house  incident 
occurred  that  crippled  most  of  the  furniture  in  his  room 
and  deprived  the  stair-rail  of  its  spindles.  R.  Browning, 
2nd,  bank  clerk,  paid  the  damages,  and  R.  Browning, 
3rd,  aged  twenty,  came  back  home,  formally  notifying 
all  parties  concerned  that  he  had  chosen  a  career — it 
was  Poetry.  He  would  woo  the  divine  Goddess,  no 
matter  who  opposed.  There  now !  His  mother  was  de- 
lighted ;  his  father  gave  reluctant  assent,  declaring  that 
any  course  in  life  was  better  than  vacillation  ;  &  Miss 
Flower,  who  probably  had  sown  the  dragon's  teeth,  as- 
sumed a  look  of  surprise  and  gave  it  as  her  opinion  that 
Robert  Browning  would  yet  be  Poet-Laureate  of 
England. 

32 


ROBERT  nHBH^nBnOBERT   BROWNING    awoke 
BROWNING  ^lik    ^_^_""^VaKl  one  morning  with   a  start  —  it 

was   the   morning   of  his   thir- 
tieth birthday. 

One's  thirtieth  birthday  and  his 
seventieth  are  days  that  press 
their  message  home  with  iron 
hand.  With  his  seventieth  mile- 
stone past,  a  man  feels  that  his 
work   is  done,  and  dim  voices 
call  to  him  from  across  the  Unseen.  His  work  is  done, 
and  so  illy  compared  with  what  he  once  wished  and  ex- 
pected !  But  the  impressions  made  upon  his  heart  by 
the  day  are  no  deeper  than  those  his  thirtieth  birthday 
inspires  c2$ 

At  thirty,  youth,  with  all  it  palliates  and  excuses,  is 
gone  forever.  The  time  for  athletic  sports  is  past ;  the 
young  avoid  you,  or  else  look  up  to  you  as  a  Nestor  & 
tempt  you  to  grow  reminiscent.  You  are  a  man  and  must 
give  an  account  of  yourself. 

Out  of  the  stillness  came  a  Voice  to  Robert  Brown- 
ing saying,  •*  What  hast  thou  done  with  the  talent  I 
gave  thee?  " 

What  had  he  done  ?  It  seemed  to  him  at  the  moment 
as  if  he  had  done  nothing.  He  arose  and  looked  into 
the  mirror.  A  few  gray  hairs  were  mixed  in  his  beard, 
there  were  crow's  feet  on  his  forehead,  and  the  first 
joyous  flush  of  youth  had  gone  from  his  face  forever. 
He  was  a  bachelor,  inwardly  at  war  with  his  environ- 
38 


ment,  but  making  a  bold  front  with  his  tuppence  worth  ROBERT 
of  philosophy  to  conceal  the  unrest  within.  BROWNING 

A  bachelor  of  thirty,  strong  in  limb,  clear  in  brain  and 
yet  a  dependent !  No  one  but  himself  to  support  and 
could  n't  even  do  that !  Gadzooks  !  Fie  upon  all  poetry 
and  a  plague  upon  the  dumb,  dense,  shopkeeping, 
beer-drinking  nation  upon  which  the  sun  never  sets ! 
d|b  The  father  of  Robert  Browning  had  done  every- 
thing a  father  could.  He  had  supplied  board  and  books, 
and  given  his  son  an  allowance  of  a  pound  a  week  for 
ten  years.  He  had  sent  him  on  a  journey  to  Italy,  and 
published  several  volumes  of  the  young  man's  verse 
at  his  own  expense,  &  these  books  were  piled  high  in 
the  garret,  save  a  few  that  had  been  bought  by  chari- 
table friends  or  given  away. 

Robert  Browning  was  not  discouraged — oh  no,  not 
that,  only  the  world  sort  of  stretched  out  in  a  dull, 
monotonous  gray,  where  once  it  was  green,  the  color 
of  hope,  and  all  decked  with  flowers. 
The  little  literary  world  of  London  knew  Browning  & 
respected  him.  He  was  earnest  and  sincere  and  his 
personality  carried  weight.  His  face  was  not  handsome, 
but  his  manner  was  one  of  poise  and  purpose,  and  to 
come  within  his  aura  and  look  into  his  calm  eyes  was 
to  respect  the  man  and  make  obeisance  to  the  intellect 
that  you  felt  lay  behind. 

A  few  editors  had  gone  out  of  their  way  to  ♦*  discover" 
him  to  the  world,  but  their  lavish  reviews  fell  flat. 
Buyers  would  not  buy — no  one  seemed  to  want  the 

39 


ROBERT  wares  of  Robert  Browning.  He  was  hard  to  read,  diffi- 
BROWNING  cult,  obscure — or  else  there  was  n't  anything  in  it  all, 
they  did  n't  know  which. 

Fox,  editor  of  the  "  Repository,"  had  met  Browning 
at  the  Flowers'  and  liked  him.  He  tried  to  make  his 
verse  go,  but  could  n't.  Yet  he  did  what  he  could  and 
insisted  that  Browning  should  go  with  him  to  the 
"Sunday  evenings"  at  Barry  Cornwall's.  There  he 
met  Leigh  Hunt,  Monckton  Milnes  and  Dickens. 
Then  there  were  dinner  parties  at  Sergeant  Talfourd's, 
where  he  got  acquainted  with  ^A^ordsworth,  ^Valter 
Savage  Landor  and  Macready. 

Macready  impressed  him  greatly  and  he  impressed 
Macready.  He  gave  the  actor  a  copy  of  *•  Paracelsus," 
one  of  the  pile  in  the  garret,  and  Macready  suggested 
he  write  a  play.  •'  Strafford"  was  the  result,  and  we 
know  it  was  stillborn,  and  caused  a  very  frosty  feeling 
to  exist  for  many  a  year  between  the  author  and  actor. 
When  a  play  fails  the  author  blames  the  actor  and 
the  actor  damns  the  author.  These  men  were  human. 
^  Of  course  Browning's  kinsmen  all  considered  him 
a  failure,  and  when  the  father  paid  over  the  weekly 
allowance  he  often  rubbed  it  in  a  bit.  Lizzie  Flower 
had  modified  her  prophecy  as  to  the  Laureateship,  but 
was  still  loyal.  They  had  tiffed  occasionally,  &  broken 
off  the  friendship,  and  once  I  believe  returned  letters. 
To  marry  was  out  of  the  question — he  could  n't  sup- 
port himself— &  besides  that  they  were  old,  demnition 
old  :  he  was  past  thirty  &  she  was  forty— Gramercy  1 
40 


i|b  They  tiffed.  ROBERT 

Then  they  made  up.  BROWNING 

In  the  meantime  Browning  had  formed  a  friendship, 
very  firm  and  frank,  but  strictly  Platonic,  of  course,  for 
Fanny  Haworth.  Miss  Haworth  had  seen  more  of  the 
^vo^ld  than  Miss  Flower — she  was  an  artist,  a  writer 
and  moved  in  the  best  society.  Browning  and  Miss 
Haworth  w^rote  letters  to  each  other  for  a  while  most 
every  day,  and  he  called  on  her  every  Wednesday  and 
Saturday  evening. 

Miss  Haworth  bought  and  gave  away  many  copies  of 
"  PauHne,"  "  Sordello  "  and  "Paracelsus";  and  in- 
formed her  friends  that  "  Pippa  Passes  "  and  *♦  Two  in 
a  Gondola  "  were  great  stuff. 

About  this  time  we  find  Edward  Moxon  (the  man  who 
married  the  adopted  daughter  of  Charles  and  Mary 
Lamb),  the  publisher,  saying  to  Browning:  "Your 
verse  is  all  right.  Browning,  but  a  book  of  it  is  too 
much  :  people  are  appalled  ;  they  cannot  digest  it.  And 
when  it  goes  into  a  magazine  it  is  lost  in  the  mass. 
Now  just  let  me  get  out  your  work  in  little  monthly 
installments,  in  booklet  form,  and  I  think  it  will  go." 
1^  Browning  jumped  at  the  idea. 

The  booklets  were  gotten  out  in  paper  covers  and  of- 
fered at  a  moderate  price. 

They  sold,  and  sold  well.  The  literary  elite  bought 
them  by  the  dozen  to  give  away. 

People  began  to  talk  about  Browning — he  was  getting 
a  foothold.  His  royalties  now  amounted  to  as  much  as 

41 


ROBERT  the  weekly  allowance  from  his  father,  and  pater  wAtt 
BROWNING       talking  of  cutting  off  the  stipend  entirely  ^  Fi- 
nances being  easy,  Browning  thought  it  a  good 
time  to  take  another  look  at  Italy — some 
of  the  best  things  he  had  written  had 
been  inspired  by  Venice  &  Asolo 
— he  would  go  again.  And  so 
he  engaged  passage  on  a 
sailing  ship  for  Naples. 


IHORTLY  after  Browning's  re- 
turn to  London  in  1844,  he  dined 
at  Sergeant  Talfourd's  i§t  After 
the  dinner  a  well  dressed  and 
sprightly  old  gentleman  intro- 
duced himself  and  begged  that 
Browning  would  inscribe  a  copy 
of ' 'Bells  &  Pomegranates,' '  that 
he  had  gotten  specially  bound. 
There  is  an  ancient  myth  about 
writers  being  harassed  by  autograph  fiends  and  all  that, 
but  the  simple  fact  is,  nothing  so  warms  the  cockles 
of  an  author's  heart  as  to  be  asked  for  his  autograph. 
Of  course  Browning  graciously  complied  with  the 
gentleman's  request,  and  in  order  that  he  might  insert 
the  owner's  name  in  the  inscription  asked, 
"  What  name,  please  ?  " 
And  the  answer  was,  "John  Kenyon." 
Then  Mr.  Browning  and  Mr.  Kenyon  had  a  nice  little 
visit,  talking  about  books  and  art.  And  Mr.  Kenyon  told 
Mr.  Browning  that  Miss  Elizabeth  Barrett,  the  poet- 
ess, was  a  cousin  of  his — he  was  a  bit  boastful  of  the 
fact  .PO^**^ 

And  Mr.  Browning  nodded  and  said  he  had  often  heard 
of  her,  and  admired  her  work. 

Then  Mr.  Kenyon  suggested  that  Mr.  Browning  write 
and  tell  her  so — **  You  sec  she  has  just  gotten  out  a  new 
book,  and  we  are  all  a  little  nervous  about  how  it  is 
going  to  take.  Miss  Barrett  lives  in  a  darkened  room, 

43 


ROBERT 
BROWNING 


ROBERT  you  know, — sees  no  one — and  a  letter  from  a  man  like 
BROWNING  you  would  encourage  her  greatly." 

Mr.  Kenyon  wrote  the  address  of  Miss  Barrett  on  a 
card  and  pushed  it  across  the  table. 
Mr.  Browning  took  the  card,  put  it  in  his  pocket-book 
and  promised  to  write  Miss  Barrett,  as  Mr.  Kenyon 
requested. 
And  he  did. 
Miss  Barrett  replied. 

Mr.  Browning  answered,  and  soon  several  letters  a 
week  were  going  in  each  direction. 
Not  quite  so  many  missives  were  being  received  by 
Fanny  Haworth,  and  as  for  Lizzie  Flower,  I  fear  she 
was  quite  forgotten.  She  fell  into  a  decline,  drooped  and 
died  in  a  year. 

Mr.  Browning  asked  for  permission  to  call  on  Miss 
Barrett  WV 

Miss  Barrett  explained  that  her  father  would  not  allow 
it,  neither  would  the  doctor  or  nurse,  &  added,  "  There 
is  nothing  to  see  in  me.  I  am  a  weed  fit  for  the  ground 
and  darkness." 

But  this  repulse  only  made  Mr.  Browning  want  to  see 
her  the  more.  He  appealed  to  Mr.  Kenyon,  who  was 
the  only  person  allowed  to  call,  besides  Miss  Mitford — 
Mr.  Kenyon  was  her  cousin. 

Mr.  Kenyon  arranged — he  was  an  expert  at  arranging 
anything  of  a  delicate  nature.  He  timed  the  hour  Mr. 
Barrett  was  down  town,  &  the  nurse  and  doctor  safely 
out  of  the  way,  and  they  called  on  the  invalid  prisoner 
44 


in  the  darkened  room  ^  They  did  not  stay  long,  but  ROBERT 
when  they  went  away  Robert  Browning  trod  on  air.  BROWNING 
The  beautiful  girl-like  face,  in  its  frame  of  dark  curls 
lying  back  among  the  pillows,  haunted  him  like  a  shad- 
ow. He  was  thirty-three,  she  was  thirty-five.  She  looked 
like  a  child,  but  the  mind — the  subtle,  appreciative,  re- 
ceptive mind !  The  mind  that  caught  every  allusion, 
that  knew  his  thought  before  he  voiced  it,  that  found 
nothing  obscure  in  his  work  and  that  put  a  high  and 
holy  construction  on  his  every  sentence — it  was  divine  ! 
divinity  incarnated  in  woman. 

Robert  Browning  tramped  the  streets  forgetful  of  meat, 
drink  or  rest. 

He  would  give  this  woman  freedom.  He  would  devote 
himself  to  restoring  her  to  the  air  and  sunshine.  What 
nobler  ambition !  He  was  an  idler,  he  had  never  done 
anything  for  anybody.  He  was  only  a  killer  of  time,  a 
vagrant,  but  now  was  his  opportunity — he  would  do  for 
this  beautiful  soul  what  no  one  else  on  earth  could  do. 
She  was  slipping  away  as  it  was — the  world  would  soon 
lose  her.  "Was  there  none  to  save  ? 
Here  was  the  finest  intellect  ever  given  to  a  woman — 
so  sure,  so  vital,  so  tender  and  yet  so  strong  ! 
He  would  love  her  back  to  life  and  light ! 
And  so  Robert  Browning  told  her  all  this  shortly  after, 
but  before  he  told,  she  had  divined  his  thought.  For  sol- 
itude and  loneliness  and  heart  hunger  had  given  her  the 
power  of  an  astral  being :  she  was  in  communication 
with  all  the  finer  forces  that  pervade  our  ether. 

AS 


ROBERT  He  would  love  her  back  to  life  and  light— he  told  herso. 
BROWNING   She  grew  better. 

And  soon  we  find  her  getting  up  &  throwing  wide  the 
shutters.  It  was  no  longer  the  darkened  room,  for  the 
sunlight  came  dancing  through  the  apartment,  driving 
out  all  the  dark  shadows  that  lurked  therein. 
The  doctor  was  indignant ;  the  nurse  resigned. 
Of  course,  Mr.  Barrett  was  not  taken  into  confidence 
and  no  one  asked  his  consent.  Why  should  they  ? — he 
was  the  man  who  could  never  understand. 
So  one  fine  day  when  the  coast  was  clear,  the  couple 
went  over  to  St.  Pancras  Church,  and  were  married. 
The  bride  went  home  alone — could  walk  all  right  now 
—  and  it  was  a  week  before  her  husband  saw  her,  be- 
cause he  would  not  be  a  hypocrite  and  go  ring  the  door 
bell  and  ask  if  Miss  Barrett  was  home  ;  and  of  course 
if  he  had  asked  for  Mrs.  Robert  Browning,  no  one 
would  have  known  whom  he  wanted  to  see. 
But  at  the  end  of  a  week,  the  bride  stole  down  the 
stairs,  while  the  family  was  at  dinner,  leading  her  dog 
Flush  by  a  string,  &  all  the  time,  with  throbbing  heart, 
she  prayed  the  dog  not  to  bark.  I  have  oft  wondered  in 
the  stilly  night-season  what  the  effect  on  English  Let- 
ters would  have  been,  had  the  dog  really  barked !  But 
the  dog  did  not  bark ;  and  Elizabeth  met  her  husband 
there  on  the  corner  where  the  mail  box  is.  No  one 
missed  the  runaway  until  the  next  day,  &  then  the  bride 
&  groom  were  safely  in  France,  writing  letters  back 
from  Dieppe,  asking  forgiveness  and  craving  blessings. 
46 


,^HE  is  the  Genius  and  I  am  the 
Clever  Person,"  Browning  used 
to  say.  And  this  I  believe  will 
be  the  world's  final  judgment. 
Browning  knew  the  world  in  its 
every  phase — good  &  bad,  high 
&  low,  society  and  commerce, 
the  shop  and  gipsy  camp.  He 
absorbed  things,  learned  them, 
compared  and  wrote  it  out. 
Elizabeth  Barrett  had  never  traveled,  her  opportunities 
for  meeting  people  had  been  few,  her  experiences  lim- 
ited and  yet  she  evolved  truth :  she  secreted  beauty 
from  within. 

For  two  years  after  their  elopement  they  did  not  write 
— how  could  they  ?  goodness  me  !  They  were  on  their 
wedding  tour.  They  lived  in  Florence  and  Rome  and 
in  various  mountain  villages  in  Italy. 
Health  came  back,  and  joy  and  peace  and  perfect  love 
were  theirs.  But  it  was  joy  bought  with  a  price — Eliz- 
abeth Barrett  Browning  had  forfeited  the  love  of  her 
father.  Her  letters  written  him  came  back  unopened, 
books  inscribed  to  him  were  returned — he  declared  she 
^vas  dead  >^S?> 

Her  brothers,  too,  discarded  her,  and  when  her  two 
sisters  wrote,  they  did  so  by  stealth  and  their  letters, 
meant  to  be  kind,  were  steel  for  her  heart.  Then  her 
father  was  rich  ;  and  she  had  always  known  every  com- 
fort that  money  could  buy.  Now,  she  had  taken  up  with 

47 


ROBERT 
BROWNING 


ROBERT  a  poor  poet  and  every  penny  had  to  be  counted — abso- 
BROWNING  lute  economy  was  demanded.  And  Robert  Browning, 
with  a  certain  sense  of  guilt  upon  him,  for  depriving 
her  of  all  the  creature  comforts  she  had  known,  sought 
by  tenderness  and  love  to  make  her  forget  the  insults 
her  father  heaped  upon  her. 

As  for  Browning  the  bank  clerk,  he  was  vexed  that  his 
son  should  show  so  little  sense  as  to  load  himself  up 
with  an  invalid  wife,  and  he  cut  off  the  allowance,  de- 
claring that  if  a  man  was  old  enough  to  marry  he  was 
also  old  enough  to  care  for  himself.  He  did,  however, 
make  his  son  several  "loans";  and  finally  came  to 
"  bless  the  day  that  his  son  had  sense  enough  to  marry 
the  best  and  most  talented  woman  on  earth." 
Browning's  poems  were  selling  slowly,  &  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing's books  brought  her  a  little  royalty,  thanks  to  the 
loyal  management  of  John  Kenyon,  and  so  absolute 
want  and  biting  poverty  did  not  overtake  the  runaways. 
1^  After  the  birth  of  her  son  in  1849,  Mrs.  Browning's 
health  seemed  to  have  fully  returned.  She  used  to  ride 
horseback  up  and  down  the  mountain  passes,  &  wrote 
home  to  Miss  Mitford  that  love  had  turned  the  dial 
backward  &thejoyousness  of  girlhood  had  come  again 
to  her. 

W^hen  John  Kenyon  died  and  left  them  ten  thousand 
pounds,  all  their  own,  it  placed  them  forever  beyond 
the  apprehension  of  want,  and  also  enabled  them  to  do 
for  others,  for  they  pensioned  old  Walter  Savage  Lan- 
dor,  and  established  him  in  comfortable  quarters  around 
48 


the  corner  from  Casa  Guidi  il|li  I  intimated  a  moment   ROBERT 
ago  that  their  honeymoon  continued  for  two  years.  This   BROWNING 
was  a  mistake,  as  it  continued  for  just  fifteen  years, 
when  the  beautiful  girl-like  form,  with  her  head  of  flow- 
ing curls  upon    her    husband's    shoulder,    ceased    to 
breathe.  Painlessly  and  without  apprehension  or  pre- 
monition the  spirit  had  taken  its  flight. 
That  letter  of  Miss  Blagdon's,  written  some  weeks  af- 
ter, telling  of  how  the  stricken  man  paced  the  echoing 
hallways  at  night  crying,  **  I  want  her !  I  want  her !  " 
touches  us  like  a  strange,   personal  sorrow  that  once 
pierced  our  hearts. 

But  Robert  Browning's  nature  was  too  strong  to  be 
subdued  by  grief.  He  remembered  that  others,  too,  had 
buried  their  dead,  and  that  sorrow  had  been  man's  por- 
tion since  the  world  began.  He  would  live  for  his  boy — 
for  Her  child. 

But  Florence  was  no  longer  his  Florence,  and  he  made 
haste  to  settle  up  his  affairs  and  go  back  to  England. 
He  never  returned  to  Florence,  &  never  saw  the  beau- 
tiful monument,  designed  by  his  lifelong  friend,  Fred- 
erick Leighton. 

When  you  visit  the  little  English  Cemetery  at  Florence, 
the  slim  little  girl  that  comes  down  the  path,  swinging 
the  big  bunch  of  keys,  opens  the  high  iron  gate  &  leads 
you,  without  word  or  question,  straight  to  the  grave  of 
Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning. 

Browning  was  forty-nine  when  Mrs.  Browning  died« 
And  by  the  time  he  had  reached  his  fiftieth  meridian, 

49 


ROBERT  England,   hearkening  to  America's  suggestion,  was 
BROWNING  awakening  to  the  fact  that  he  was  one  of  the  world's 
great  poets. 

Honors  came  slowly,  but  surely — Oxford  with  a  degree; 
St.  Andrew's  with  a  Lord-Rectorship ;  publishers  with 
advance  payments.  And  when  Smith  and  Elder  paid 
one  hundred  pounds  for  the  poem  of  "Herve  Riel,"  it 
seemed  that  at  last  Browning's  worth  was  being  rec- 
ognized. Not  of  course  that  money  is  the  infallible  test, 
but  even  poetry  has  its  Rialto,  where  the  extent  of  ap- 
preciation is  shown  by  prices  current. 
Browning's  best  work  was  done  after  his  wife's  death  ; 
and  in  that  love  he  ever  lived  and  breathed.  In  his  sev- 
enty-fifth year,  it  filled  his  days  and  dreams  as  though 
it  were  a  thing  of  yesterday,  singing  in  his  heart  a  con- 
tinual eucharist. 

The  "Ring  and  the  Book  "  must  be  regarded  as  Brown- 
ing's crowning  work.  Off-hand  critics  have  disposed  of 
it,  but  the  great  minds  go  back  to  it  again  and  again.  In 
the  character  of  Pompilia  the  author  sought  to  pay 
tribute  to  the  woman  whose  memory  w^as  ever  in  his 
mind ;  yet  he  was  too  sensitive  and  shrinking  to  fully 
picture  her.  He  sought  to  mask  his  inspiration  ;  but  ten- 
der, loving  recollections  of  *'  Ba"  are  interlaced  and 
interwoven  through  it  all  i§t  When  Robert  Browning 
died  in  i88g,  the  world  of  literature  &  art  uncovered  in 
token  of  honor  to  one  who  had  lived  long  and  well 
and  had  done  a  deathless  work.  And  the  doors  of 
storied  Westminster  opened  wide  to  receive  his  dust. 

50 


Tennyson 

Fi-oin  tlie  etching  by  Raj  on 


ALFRED  TENNYSON 


Not  of  the  sunlight, 
Not  of  th«  moonlight, 
Nor  of  the  starlight ! 
O  young  Mariner, 
Down  to  the  haven. 
Call  your  companions, 
Launch  your  vessel. 
And  crowd  your  canvas, 
And  ere  it  vanishes 
Over  the  margin. 
After  it,  follow  it, 
Follow  the  Gleam. 
— Merlin. 


IHE  grandfather  of  Tennyson  had  two  ALFRED 

Isons,  the  elder  boy  according  to  Mr.  TENNYSON 
Clement  Scott,  being  «'  both  willful  & 
commonplace."  Now  of  course  the 
property  &  honors  &  titles,  according 
to  the  Law  of  England,  would  all  grav- 
itate to  the  commonplace  boy ;  &  the 
second  son,  who  was  competent,  duti- 
ful &  worthy,  would  be  out  in  the  cold 

jworld — simply  because  he  was  acci- 
dentally born  second  &  not  first.  It  was 
not  his  fault  that  he  was  born  second, 
&  it  was  in  no  wise  to  the  credit  of 

jthe  other  that  he  was  born  first. 
So  the  father,  seeing  that  the  elder 
boy  had  small  exjecutive  capacity,  & 
no  appreciation  of  a  Good  Thing,  dis-  ^ 

inherited  him,  giving  him,  however,  a 

Igenerous  allowance,  but  letting  the 

■titles  go  to  the  second  boy,  who  was 

Ibright  and  brave  and  withal  a  right 

Imanly  fellow. 

Personally  I  'm  glad  the  honors  went 
to  the  best  man.  But  Hallam  Tenny- 
son, son  of  the  Poet,  sees  only  rank 

jinjustice  in  the  action  of  his  ancestor 
who  deliberately  set  his  own  opinion 

|of  right  and  justice  against  precedent 


5x 


ALFRED  as  embodied  in  English  Law  il^  As  a  matter  of  strictest 
TBNNYSON  justice,  we  might  argue  that  neither  boy  was  entitled 
to  anything  which  he  had  not  earned,  and  in  dividing 
the  property  between  them,  instead  of  allowing  it  all 
to  drift  into  the  hands  of  the  one  accidentally  born  first, 
the  father  acted  wisely  and  well. 

But  neither  Alfred  nor  Hallam  Tennyson  thought  so. 
How  much  their  opinions  were  biased  by  the  fact  that 
they  were  descendants  of  the  first-born  son  we  cannot 
say.  Anyway,  the  descendants  of  the  second  son,  Hon. 
Charles  Tennyson  d'Eyncourt,  have  made  no  protest, 
of  which  I  can  learn,  about  justice  being  defeated. 
Considering  this  subject  of  the  Law  of  Entail  one  step 
further,  we  find  that  Hallam,  the  present  Lord  Tenny- 
son, is  a  Peer  of  the  Realm  simply  because  his  father 
was  a  great  poet,  and  honors  were  given  him  on  that 
account  by  the  Queen.  These  honors  go  to  Hallam,  who 
as  all  men  agree,  is  in  many  ways  singularly  like  his 
grandfather. 

Genius  is  not  hereditary,  but  titles  are.  Hallam  is  em- 
inently pleased  with  the  English  Law  of  Entail,  save 
that  he  questions  whether  any  father  has  the  divine 
right  to  divert  his  titles  and  wealth  from  the  eldest  son. 
Lord  Hallam's  arguments  are  earnest  and  well  ex- 
pressed, but  they  seem  to  show  that  he  is  lacking  in 
what  Herbert  Spencer  calls  the  "value  sense"— in 
other  words,  the  sense  of  humor. 
Hallam's  lack  of  perspective  is  further  in  evidence 
through  his  patient  efforts  to  explain  who  the  various 
52 


Tennysons  were.  In  my  boyhood  days  I  thought  there  ALFRED 

was  but  one  Tennyson.  On  reading  Hallam's  book,  TENNYSON 

however,  one  would  think  there  were  dozens  of  them. 

To  keep  these  various  men,  bearing  one  name,  from 

being  confused  in  the  mind  of  the  reader  is  quite  a  task, 

and  to  better  identify  one  particular  Tennyson,  Hallam 

usually  refers  to  him  as  "  Father,"  or  **  My  Father."  ^ 

In  the  course  of  a  recent  interview  with  Mr.  'W.  H. 

Seward,  of  Auburn,  N.  Y.,  I  was  impressed  by  his 

dignified,  respectful  and  affectionate  references 

to  "  Seward."  ««  This  belonged  to  Seward," 

&"  Seward  told  me," — as  though  there 

were  but  one.  In  these  pages  I  will 

speak  of  Tennyson — there  has 

been  but  one — there  will 

never   be   another. 


ill  ^ 
53 


ALFRED 
TENNYSON 


HINK  Mr.  Clement  Scott  is  a 
little  severe  in  his  estimate  of 
the  character  of  Tennyson's  i^ 
father,  although  the  main  facts 
are  doubtless  as  he  states  them. 
The  Rev.  George  Clayton  Ten- 
nyson, Rector  of  Somersby  and 
\A^ood  Enderby  parishes,  was  a 
typical  English  parson.  As  a 
boy  he  was  simply  big,  fat  and 
lazy.  His  health  was  so  perfect  that  it  overtopped  all 
ambition  and  having  no  nerves  to  speak  of,  his  sensibili- 
ties were  very  slight. 

When  he  was  disinherited,  in  favor  of  his  younger 
brother,  a  keen,  nervous,  forceful  fellow,  he  accepted 
it  as  a  matter  of  course.  His  career  was  planned  for 
him  :  he  "  took  orders,"  married  the  young  woman  his 
folks  selected,  and  slipped  easily  into  his  proper  niche — 
his  adipose  serving  as  a  buffer  for  his  feelings.  In  his 
intellect  there  was  no  flash,  and  his  insight  into  the 
heart  of  things  was  small. 

Being  happily  married  to  a  discreet  woman  who  man- 
aged him  without  ever  letting  him  be  aware  of  it,  and 
having  a  sure  and  sufficient  income,  and  never  know- 
ing that  he  had  a  stomach,  he  did  his  clerical  work, 
(with  the  help  of  a  curate)  and  lived  out  the  measure 
of  his  days,  no  wiser  at  the  last  than  he  was  at  thirty. 
1^  In  passing,  we  might  call  attention  to  the  fact  that 
the  average  man  is  a  victim  of  Arrested  Development, 
54 


and  that  the  passing  years  bring  an  increase  of  knowl-  ALFRED 
edge  only  in  very  exceptional  cases.  Health  and  pros-  TENNYSON 
perity  are  not  pure  blessings — a  certain  element  of  dis- 
content is  necessary  to  spur  men  on  to  a  higher  life  i^ 
Rev.  George  Clayton  Tennyson  had  income  enough  to 
meet  his  wants,  but  not  enough  to  embarrass  him  with 
the  responsibilities  of  taking  care  of  it.  Each  quarterly 
stipend  was  spent  before  it  arrived,  &  the  family  lived 
on  credit  until  another  three  months  rolled  around. 
They  had  roast  beef  as  often  as  they  wanted  it,  in  the 
cellar  were  puncheons,  kegs  and  barrels,  and  as  there 
was  no  rent  to  pay  nor  landlords  to  appease,  care  sat 
lightly  on  the  Rector. 

Elizabeth,  this  man's  wife,  is  worthy  of  more  than  a 
passing  note.  She  was  the  daughter  of  Rev.  Stephen 
Fytche,  vicar  of  Louth.  Her  family  was  not  so  high  in 
rank  as  the  Tennysons,  because  the  Tennysons  be- 
longed to  the  gentry.  But  she  was  intelligent,  amiable, 
fairly  good-looking,  and  being  the  daughter  of  a  clergy- 
man, had  beyond  doubt  a  knowledge  of  clerical  needs, 
so  it  was  thought  would  make  a  good  wife  for  the  new- 
ly appointed  incumbent  of  Somersby. 
The  parents  arranged  it,  the  young  folks  were  willing, 
and  so  they  were  married — and  the  bridegroom  was 
happy  ever  afterward. 

And  why  should  n't  he  be  happy  ?  Surely  no  man  was 
ever  blest  with  a  better  wife  !  He  had  made  a  reach  in- 
to the  matrimonial  grab-bag  and  drawn  forth  a  jewel. 
This  jewel  was  many  faceted.  Without  affectation  or 

55 


ALFRED  silly  pride  the  clergyman's  wife  did  the  work  that  God 
TENNYSON   sent  her  to  do.  The  sense  of  duty  was  strong  upon  her. 
Babies  came,  one  each  two  years,  and  in  one  case  two 
in  one  year,  and  there  was  careful  planning  required  to 
make  the  income  reach,  &  keep  the  household  in  order. 
Then  she  visited  the  poor  and  sick  of  the  parish,  and 
received  the  many  visitors.  And  with  it  all  she  found 
time  to  read.  Her  mind  was  open  and  alert  for  all  good 
things.  I  am  not  sure  that  she  was  so  very  happy, 
but  no  complaints  escaped  her.  In  all  she  bore 
twelve  children,  eight  sons  and  four  daugh- 
ters 1^  Ten  of  these   children  lived 
to  be  over  seventy-five  years  of  age. 
The  fourth   child  that   came 
to  her  they  named  Alfred. 

m 


56 


ENNYSON'S  education  in  ear- 
ly youth  was  very  slight.  His 
father  laid  down  rules  and  gave 
out  lessons,  but  the  strictness 
of  discipline  never  lasted  more 
than  two  days  at  a  time.  The 
children  ran  wild  and  roamed 
the  woods  of  Lincolnshire  in 
search  of  all  the  curious  things 
that  the  woods  hold  in  store 
for  boys  i^  The  father  occasionally  made  stern  efforts 
to  **  correct "  his  sons.  In  use  of  the  birch  he  was  am- 
bidextrous. But  I  have  noticed  that  in  households 
where  a  strap  hangs  behind  the  kitchen  door,  for  ready 
use,  it  is  not  utilized  so  much  for  pure  discipline  as  to 
case  the  feelings  of  the  parent.  They  say  that  expres- 
sion is  a  need  of  the  human  heart ;  &  I  am  also  con- 
vinced that  in  many  hearts  there  is  a  very  strong  desire 
at  times  to  **  thrash  "  someone.  Who  it  is  makes  little 
difference,  but  children  being  helpless  and  the  law  giv- 
ing us  the  right,  we  find  gratification  by  falling  upon 
them  with  straps,  birch  rods,  slippers,  ferrules,  hair 
brushes  or  apple  tree  sprouts. 

No  student  of  pedagogics  now  believes  that  the  free 
use  of  the  rod  ever  made  a  child  "  good,"  but  all  agree 
that  it  has  often  served  as  a  safety  valve  for  pent  up 
emotion  in  the  parent  and  teacher. 
The  father  of  Alfred  Tennyson  applied  the  birch,  and 
the  boy  took  to  the  woods,  moody,  resentful,  solitary. 

57 


ALFRED 
TENNYSON 


ALFRED  There  was  good  in  this,  for  the  lad  learned  to  live  with- 
TENNYSON   in  himself,  and  to  be  self-sufficient :  to  love  the  solitude, 
and  feel  a  kinship  with  all  the  life  that  makes  the  groves 
and  fields  melodious. 

In  1828,  when  nineteen  years  of  age,  Alfred  was  sent 
to  Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  He  remained  there  three 
years,  but  left  w^ithout  a  degree,  and  what  w^as  worse 
— with  the  ill-w^ill  of  his  teachers,  who  seemed  to  regard 
his  a  hopeless  case.  He  would  n't  study  the  books  they 
wanted  him  to. 

College  life,  however,  has  much  to  recommend  it  be- 
side the  curriculum.  At  Cambridge,  Tennyson  made  the 
acquaintanceship   of  a  group  of  young  men  who  in- 
fluenced his  life  profoundly.  Kemble,  Milnes, Brook- 
field  &  Spedding  remained  his  life-long  friends  ; 
and  as  all  good  is  reciprocal,  no  man  can 
say   how   much   these  eminent   men 
owe  to  the  moody  &  melancholy 
Tennyson,  or  how  much 
he  owes  to  them. 


5« 


JENN  YSON  began  to  write  verse 
very  young.  He  has  told  of  go- 
ing ^vhen  thirteen  years  of  age 
to  visit  his  grandfather,  and  of 
presenting  him  a  poem.  The  old 
gentleman  gave  him  half  a  ^ 
guinea  with  the  remark,  "  This 
is  the  first  money  you  ever  made 
by  writing  poetry,  and  take  my 
word  for  it,  it  will  be  the  last !  " 
When  eighteen  years  of  age,  with  his  brother,  Charles, 
he  produced  a  thin  book  of  thin  verses. 
We  have  the  opinion  of  Coleridge  to  the  effect  that  the 
only  lines  which  have  any  merit  in  the  book,  are  those 
signed  C.  T.  ^  Charles  became  a  clergyman  of  marked 
ability,  married  rich,  and  changed  his  name  from  Ten- 
nyson to  Turner  for  economic  and  domestic  reasons. 
Years  afterward,  when  Alfred  had  become  Poet  Lau- 
reate, rumor  has  it,  he  thought  of  changing  the  "  Tur- 
ner "  back  to  ••  Tennyson,"  but  was  unable  to  bring  it 
about  *V^ 

The  only  honor  captured  by  Alfred  at  Cambridge  was 
a  prize  for  his  poem,  ••  Timbuctoo."  The  encourage- 
ment that  this  brought  him,  backed  up  by  Arthur  Hal- 
lam's  declaiming  the  piece  in  public — as  a  sort  of  defi 
to  detractors — caused  him  to  fix  his  attention  more  as- 
siduously on  verse.  He  could  write — it  was  the  only 
thing  he  could  do — and  so  he  wrote. 
The  year  he  was  twenty-one  he  published  a  small  book 

59 


ALFRED 
TENNYSON 


ALFRED  called  "Poems,  Chiefly  Lyrical."  The  books  went  a- 
TENNYSON  begging  for  many  years  ;  but  times  change,  for  a  copy 
of  this  edition  was  sold  by  Quaritch  in  1895  for  one 
hundred  and  eighty  pounds.  The  only  piece  in  the  book 
that  seems  to  show  genuine  merit  is  '•  Mariana." 
Two  years  afterward  a  second  edition,  revised  and  en- 
larged, was  brought  out.  This  book  contains  "  The  Lady 
of  Shallott,"  "The  May  Queen,"  "A  Dream  of  Fair 
Women  "  and  "  The  Lotus  Eaters." 
Beyond  a  few  fulsome  reviews  from  personal  friends 
and  a  little  surly  mention  from  the  tribe  of  Jeffrey,  the 
volume  attracted  no  attention.  This  coldness  on  the 
part  of  buyers  shot  an  atrabiliar  tint  through  the  am- 
bition of  our  poet  and  the  fond  hope  of  a  success  in  lit- 
erature faded  from  his  mind. 

And  then  began  what  Stopford  Brooke  has  called  "the 
ten  fallow  years  in  the  life  of  Tennyson."  But  fallow 
years  are  not  all  fallow.  The  dark  brooding  night  is  as 
necessary  for  our  life  as  the  garish  day.  Great  crops  of 
wheat  that  feed  the  nations  grow  only  where  the  win- 
ter's snow  covers  all  as  with  a  garment.  And  ever  behind 
the  mystery  of  sleep,  and  beneath  the  silence  of  the 
snow,  Nature  slumbers  not  nor  sleeps. 
The  withholding  of  quick  recognition  gave  the  mind  of 
Tennyson  an  opportunity  to  ripen.  Fate  held  him  in 
leash  that  he  might  be  saved  for  a  masterly  work,  and 
all  the  time  that  he  lived  in  semi-solitude  and  read  and 
thought  and  tramped  the  fields,  his  soul  was  growing 
strong  and  his  spirit  was  taking  on  the  silken  self-suf- 
60 


ficicnt  strength  that  marked  his  later  days  i9fb  This  hi-  ALFRED 
atus  of  ten  years  in  the  life  of  our  poet  is  very  similar  TENNYSON 
to  the  thirteen  fallow  years  in  the  career  of  Browning. 
These  men  crossed  and  re-crossed  each  other's  path- 
way but  did  not  meet  for  many  years.  What  a  help 
they  might  have  been  to  each  other  in  those  years  of 
doubt  and  seeming  defeat !  But  each  was  to  make  his 
way  alone  »€^ 

Browning  seemed  to  grow  through  society  and  travel, 
but  solitude  served  the  needs  of  Tennyson. 
"There  must  be  a  man  behind  every  sentence,"  said 
Emerson.  After  ten  years  of  silence,  when  Tennyson 
issued  his  book,  the  literary  world  recognized  the  man 
behind  it.  Tennyson  had  grown  as  a  writer,  but  more 
as  a  man.  And  after  all,  it  is  more  to  be  a  man  than  a 
poet  1^  All  who  knew  Tennyson,  and  have  written  of 
him,  especially  during  those  early  years,  begin  with  a 
description  of  his  appearance.  His  looks  did  not  belie 
the  man.  In  intellect  and  in  stature  he  was  a  giant.  The 
tall,  athletic  form,  the  great  shaggy  head,  the  classic 
features  &  the  look  of  untried  strength  were  all  thrown 
into  fine  relief  by  the  modesty,  the  half-embarrassment 
of  his  manner. 

To  meet  the  poet  was  to  acknowledge  his  power.  No 
man  can  talk  as  wise  as  he  can  look,  and  Tennyson 
never  tried  to.  His  words  were  few  and  simple. 
Those  who  met  him  went  away  ready  to  back  his  light- 
est word.  They  felt  there  was  a  man  behind  the  sen- 
tence -M^S? 

6z 


ALFRED  Carlyle,  who  was  a  hero-worshipcr,  but  who  usually 
TENNYSON  limited  his  worship  to  those  well  dead  and  long  gone 
hence,  wrote  of  Tennyson  to  Emerson:  ♦•  One  of  the 
finest  looking  men  in  the  world.  A  great  shock  of  dusky 
hair ;  bright,  laughing,  hazel  eyes ;  massive  aquiline 
face,  most  massive  yet  most  delicate  ;  of  sallow  brown 
complexion,  almost  Indian-looking,  clothes  cynically 
loose,  free-and-easy,  smokes  infinite  tobacco.  His  voice 
is  musical,  metallic,  fit  for  loud  laughter  and  piercing 
wail,  and  all  that  may  lie  between ;  speech  and  specu- 
lation free  and  plenteous ;  I  do  not  meet  in  these  late 
decades  such  company  over  a  pipe  !  V/o  shall  see  what 
he  will  grow  to." 

And  then  again,  writing  to  his  brother  John :  "Some 
weeks  ago,  one  night,  the  poet  Tennyson  and  Matthew 
Arnold  were  discovered  here  sitting  smoking  in  the  gar- 
den. Tennyson  had  been  here  before,  but  was  still  new 
to  Jane, — who  was  alone  for  the  first  hour  or  two  of  it. 
A  fine,  large  featured,  dim-eyed,  bronze-colored,  shag- 
gy-headed man  is  Alfred ;  dusty,  smoky,  free-and-easy ; 
who  swims  outwardly  and  inwardly,  with  great  com- 
posure in  an  articulate  element  as  of  tranquil  chaos 
and  tobacco-smoke  ;  great  now  and  then  when  he  does 
emerge  ;  a  most  restful,  brotherly,  solid-hearted  man." 
The  "  English  Idylls,"  put  forth  in  1842  contained  all 
of  the  poems,  heretofore  published,  that  Tennyson 
cared  to  retain.  It  must  be  stated  to  the  credit,  or  dis- 
credit, of  America,  that  the  only  complete  editions  of 
Tennyson  were  issued  by  New  York  and  Boston  pub- 
6s 


lishers  i§t  These  men  seized  upon  the  immature  early  ALFRED 
poems  of  Tennyson,  and  combining  them  with  his  later  TENNYSON 
books,  issued  the  whole  in  a  style  that  tried  men's  eyes 
— very  proud  of  the  fact  that  "  this  is  the  only  com- 
plete edition,"  etc.  Of  course  they  paid  the  author  no 
royalty,  neither  did  they  heed  his  protests,  and  possi- 
bly all  this  prepared  the  way  for  frosty  receptions  of 
daughters  of  quick  machine-made  American  million- 
aires, who  journeyed  to  the  Isle  of  ^^ight  in  after  days. 
Soon  after  the  publication  of  "  English  Idylls,"  Alfred 
Tennyson  moved  gracefully,  like  the  launching  of 
a  ship,  into  the  first  place  among  living  poets.  He 
was  then  thirty-three  years  of  age,  with  just  half  a 
century,  lacking  a  few  months,  yet  to  live.  In  all  that 
half  century,  with  its  conflicting  literary  lights  &  glares, 
his  title  to  first  place  was  never  seriously  questioned. 
^  Up  to  1842,  in  his  various  letters,  and  through  his 
close  friends,  we  learn  that  Tennyson  was  sore  pressed 
for  funds.  He  had  n't  money  to  buy  books,  and  when 
he  traveled  it  was  through  the  munificence  of  some 
kind  kinsman.  He  even  excuses  himself  from  attending 
certain  social  functions  on  account  of  his  lack  of  suit- 
able raiment — probably  with  a  certain  satisfaction. 
But  when  he  tells  of  his  poverty  to  Emily  Sellwood, 
the  woman  of  his  choice,  there  is  anguish  in  his  cry. 
In  fact,  her  parents  succeeded  in  breaking  off  her  re- 
lationship w^ith  Tennyson  for  a  time  on  account  of  his 
very  uncertain  prospects.  His  brothers,  even  those 
younger  than  he,  had  slipped  into  snug  positions — "  but 


ALFRED  Alfred  dreams  on  with  nothing  special  in  sight. "i^  Po- 
TENNYSON  etry,  in  way  of  a  financial  return,  is  not  to  be  com- 
mended. Honors  were  coming  Tennyson's  way  as  early 
as  1842,  but  it  was  not  until  1845,  when  a  pension  of 
two  hundred  pounds  a  year  was  granted  him  by  the 
Government  that  he  began  to  feel  easy. Even  then  there 
were  various  old  scores  in  way  of  loans  to  liquidate. 
The  year  1850,  when  he  was  forty-one,  has  been  called 
his  "golden  year,"  for  in  it  occurred  the  publication  of 
**  In  Memoriam,"  his  appointment  to  the  post  of  Poet 
Laureate,  and  his  marriage. 

Emily  Sellwood  had  waited  for  him  all  these  years. 
She  had  been  sought  after,  &  had  refused  several  good 
offers  from  eligible  widowers  and  others  who  pitied  her 
sad  plight  and  looked  upon  her  as  a  forlorn  old  maid. 
But  she  had  given  her  heart  to  another. 
Possibly  she  had  not  been  courted  quite  so  assiduously 
as  Tennyson's  mother  had  been.  W^hen  that  dear  old 
lady  was  past  eighty  she  became  very  deaf,  and  the 
family  often  ventured  to  carry  on  conversations  in  her 
presence  which  possibly  would  have  been  modified  had 
the  old  lady  been  in  full  possession  of  her  faculties. 
One  day  as  she  sat  knitting  in  the  chimney  corner,  one 
of  her  daughters  in  a  burst  of  confidence  to  a  visitor, 
said,  "  Why,  before  Mamma  married  Papa  she  had  re- 
ceived twenty-three  offers  of  marriage  !  " 
♦'Twenty-four,  my  dear, — twenty-four,"  corrected  the 
old  lady  as  she  shifted  the  needles. 
No  one  has  ever  claimed  that  Tennyson  was  an  ideal 
64 


lover.  Surely  he  never  could  have  been  tempted  to  do  ALFRED 
what  Browning  did — break  up  the  peace  of  a  house-  TENNYSON 
hold  by  an  elopement.  His  love  was  a  thing  of  the  head, 
^veighed  carefully  in  the  scales  of  his  judgment.  His 
caution  and  good  sense  saved  him  from  all  Byronic  ex- 
cesses, or  foolish  alliances  such  as  took  Shelley  captive. 
He  believed  in  law  and  order,  and  early  saw  that  his 
interests  lay  in  that   direction.    He   belonged   to  the 
Church  of  England,  &  doubtless  thought  as  he  pleased, 
but  ever  expressed  himself  with  caution. 
It  is  easy  to  accuse  Tennyson  of  being  insular — to  say 
that  he  is  "the  poet  of  England."  Had  he  been  more 
he  would  have  been  less.  "World-poets  have  usually 
been  revolutionists,  and  dangerous  men  who  exploded 
at  an  unknown  extent  of  concussion.  None  of  them  has 
been  a  safe  man — none  respectable.   Dante,   Shakes- 
peare, Milton,  Hugo  and  Whitman  were  outcasts. 
Tennyson  is  always  serene,  sane  and  safe — his  lines 
breathe  purity  and  excellence.  He  is  the  poet  of  religion, 
of  the  home  and  fireside,  of  established  order,  of  truth, 
justice  and  mercy  as  embodied  in  law. 
Very  early  he  became  a  close  personal  friend  of  Queen 
Victoria  and  many  of  his  lines  ministered  to  her  per- 
sonal consolation. 

1^  For  fifty  years  Tennyson's  life  was  one  steady, 
triumphal  march.  He  acquired  wealth,  such  as  no  other 
English  poet  before  him  had  ever  done ;  his  name  was 
known  in  every  corner  of  the  earth  where  white  men 
journeyed,  and  at  home  he  was  beloved  and  honored. 

65 


ALFRED  He  died  October  6th,  1892,  aged  eighty-three,  and  for 
TENNYSON  him   the    Nation  mourned,   and  with   deep 

sincerity  the  Queen  spoke  of  his  de- 
mise  as   a  poignant,   per- 
sonal   sorrow. 


66 


T  was  at  Cambridge  he  met 
Arthur  Hallam — Arthur  Hal- 
lam,  immortal  and  remembered 
alone  for  being  the  comrade  & 
friend  of  Tennyson. 
Alfred  took  his  friend  Arthur  to 
his  home  in  Lincolnshire  one 
vacation,  and  we  know  how 
Arthur  became  enamored  of 
Tennyson's  sister  Emily,  and 
they  were  betrothed.  Together,  Tennyson  and  Hallam 
made  a  trip  through  France  and  the  Pyrenees. 
Carlyle  and  Milburn,  the  blind  preacher,  once  sat  smok- 
ing in  the  little  arbor  back  of  the  house  in  Cheyne  Row. 
They  had  been  talking  of  Tennyson,  and  after  a  long 
silence  Carlyle  knocked  the  ashes  out  of  his  pipe,  and 
>vith  a  grunt  said,  **  Ha  !  Death  is  a  great  blessing — the 
joyousest  blessing  of  all !  Without  death  there  would 
ha'  been  no  *  In  Memoriam,'  no  Hallam  and  like 
enough,  no  Tennyson !  "  i^  It  is  futile  to  figure  what 
would  have  occurred  had  this  or  that  not  happened, 
since  every  act  of  life  is  a  sequence.  But  that  Carlyle  & 
many  others  believed  that  the  death  of  Hallam  was  the 
making  of  Tennyson,  there  is  no  doubt.  Possibly  his 
soul  needed  just  this  particular  amount  of  bruising  in  or- 
der to  make  it  burst  into  undying  song — who  knows  ! 
When  Charles  Kingsley  was  asked  for  the  secret  of  his 
exquisite  sympathy  and  fine  imagination,  he  paused  a 
space,  and  then  answered — "  I  had  a  friend." 

67 


ALFRED 
TENNYSON 


ALFRED  The  desire  for  friendship  is  strong  in  every  human 
TENNYSON  heart.  We  crave  the  companionship  of  those  who  can 
understand.  The  nostalgia  of  life  presses,  we  sigh  for 
"  home,"  and  long  for  the  presence  of  one  who  sympa- 
thizes with  our  aspirations,  comprehends  our  hopes 
and  is  able  to  partake  of  our  joys.  A  thought  is  not  our 
own  until  we  impart  it  to  another,  and  the  confession- 
al seems  a  crying  need  of  every  human  soul. 
One  can  bear  grief  but  it  takes  two  to  be  glad. 
We  reach  the  Divine  through  some  one,  and  by  divid- 
ing our  joy  with  this  one  we  double  it,  and  come  in 
touch  with  the  Universal.  The  sky  is  never  so  blue,  the 
birds  never  sing  so  blithely,  our  acquaintances  are  nev- 
er so  gracious  as  when  we  are  filled  with  love  for  some 
one  o^y^s^ 

Being  in  harmony  with  one  we  are  in  harmony  with  all. 
1^  The  lover  idealizes  and  clothes  the  beloved  with  vir- 
tues that  only  exist  in  his  imagination.  The  beloved  is 
consciously  or  unconsciously  aware  of  this,  and  en- 
deavors to  fulfill  the  high  ideal ;  and  in  the  contempla- 
tion of  the  transcendent  qualities  that  his  mind  has 
created,  the  lover  is  raised  to  heights  otherwise  im- 
possible t^^ 

Should  the  beloved  pass  from  earth  while  this  con- 
dition of  exaltation  exists,  the  conception  is  indelibly 
impressed  upon  the  soul,  just  as  the  last  earthly  view 
is  said  to  be  photographed  upon  the  retina  of  the  dead. 
The  highest  earthly  relationship  is  in  its  very  essence 
fleeting,  for  men  are  fallible,  and  living  in  a  world 
68 


where  material  wants  jostle,  and  change  and  time  play  ALFRED 
their  ceaseless  parts,  gradual  obliteration  comes  and  TENNYSON 
disillusion  enters.  But  the  memory  of  a  sweet  affinity 
once  fully  possessed,  and  snapped  by  fate  at  its  su- 
premest  moment,  can  never  die  from  out  the  heart.  All 
other  troubles  are  swallowed  up  in  this,  and  if  the  in- 
dividual is  of  too  stern  a  fiber  to  be  completely  crushed 
into  the  dust,  time  will  come  bearing  healing,  and  the 
memory  of  that  once  ideal  condition  will  chant  in  the 
heart  a  perpetual  eucharist. 

And  I  hope  the  world  has  passed  forever  from  the 
nightmare  of  pity  for  the  dead  :  they  have  ceased  from 
their  labors  and  are  at  rest. 

But  for  the  living,  when  death  has  entered  &  removed 
the  best  friend,  fate  has  done  her  worst ;  the  plummet 
has  sounded  the  depths  of  grief,  and  thereafter  nothing 
can  inspire  terror.  At  one  fell  stroke  all  petty  annoy- 
ances and  corroding  cares  are  sunk  into  nothingness  |9^ 
The  memory  of  a  great  love  lives  enshrined  in  undying 
amber.  It  affords  a  ballast  'gainst  all  the  storms  that 
blow,  and  although  it  lends  an  unutterable  sadness,  it 
imparts  an  unspeakable  peace.  Where  there  is  this 
haunting  memory  of  a  great  love  lost,  there  is  always 
forgiveness,  charity  and  a  sympathy  that  makes  the 
man  brother  to  all  who  suffer  and  endure.  The  indi- 
vidual himself  is  nothing :  he  has  nothing  to  hope  for, 
nothing  to  lose,  nothing  to  win,  and  this  constant  mem- 
cry  of  the  high  and  exalted  friendship  that  was  once 
his  is  a  nourishing  source  of  strength ;  it  constantly 

69 


ALFRED   purifies  the  mind  and  inspires  the  heart  to  nobler  living 
TENNYSON  and  diviner  thinking.  The  man  is  in  communication 
with  Elemental  Conditions. 

To  have  known  an  ideal  friendship,  &  had  it  fade  from 
your  grasp  and  flee  as  a  shadow  before  it  is  touched 
with  the  sordid  breath  of  selfishness,  or  sullied  by  mis- 
understanding, is  the  highest  good.  And  the  constant 
dwelling  in  sweet,  sad  recollection  on  the  exalted  vir- 
tues of  the  one  that  has  gone  tends  to  crystallize  these 
very  virtues  in  the  heart  of  him  who  meditates  them. 
^  The  beauty  with  which  love  adorns  its  object  be- 
comes at  last  the  possession  of  the  one  who  loves. 
At  the  hour  when  the  strong  and  helpful,  yet  tender  & 
sympathetic  friendship  of  Alfred  Tennyson  and  Arthur 
Hallam  was  at  its  height,  there  came  a  brief  and  abrupt 
word  from  Vienna  to  the  effect  that  Arthur  was  dead. 
The  shock  of  surprise,  followed  by  dumb,  bitter  grief, 
made  an  impression  on  the  youthful  mind  of  Tenny- 
son that  the  sixty  years  which  followed  did  not  obliter- 
ate ^'\?V 

At  first  a  numbness  and  deadness  came  over  his  spirit, 
but  this  condition  ere  long  gave  way  to  a  sweet  con- 
templation of  the  beauties  of  character  that  his  friend 
possessed,  and  he  tenderly  reviewed  the  gracious  hours 
they  had  spent  together. 

**  In  Memoriam  "  is  not  one  poem,  it  is  made  up  of 
many  *•  short  swallow-flights  of  song  that  dip  their 
wings  in  tears  and  skim  away."  There  are  one  hundred 
and  thirty  separate  songs  in  all,  held  together  by  the 
70 


silken  thread  of  love  for  his  lost  friend  ^  Seventeen  ALFRED 
years  were  required  for  their  evolution.  TENNYSON 

Some  people,  misled  by  the  title,  possibly,  think  of 
these  poems  as  a  wail  of  grief  for  the  dead,  a  vain  cry 
of  sorrow  for  the  lost,  or  a  proud  parading  of  mourn- 
ing millinery.  Such  views  could  not  be  more  wholly 
wrong  f^^ 

To  every  soul  that  has  loved  and  lost,  to  those  who 
have  stood  by  open  graves,  to  all  who  have  beheld  the 
sun  go  down  on  less  worth  in  the  world,  these  songs 
are  a  victor's  cry.  They  tell  of  love  and  life  that  rises 
phoenix-like  from  the  ashes  of  despair ;  of  doubt  turned 
to  faith  ;  of  fear  which  has  become  serenest  peace. 
All  poems  that  endure  must  have  this  helpful  uplifting 
quality.  Without  violence  of  direction  they  must  be 
beacon  lights  that  gently  guide  stricken  men  &  women 
into  safe  harbors. 

The  •*  Invocation,"  written  nearly  a  score  of  years 
after  Hallam's  death,  reveals  Tennyson's  personal  con- 
quest of  pain.  His  thought  has  broadened  from  the 
sense  of  loss  into  a  stately  march  of  conquest  over 
death  for  the  whole  human  race  i§t  The  sharpness 
of  grief  has  wakened  the  soul  to  the  contemplation  of 
sublime  ideas — truth,  justice,  nobility,  honor,  and  the 
sense  of  beauty  as  shown  in  all  created  things.  The  man 
once  loved  a  person,  now  his  heart  goes  out  to  the  uni- 
verse. The  dread  of  death  is  gone,  and  he  calmly  con- 
templates his  own  end  and  waits  the  summons  without 
either  impatience  or  fear.  He  realizes  that  death  itself 

71 


ALFRED  is  a  manifestation  of  life— that  it  is  as  natural  and  just 
TENNYSON  as  necessary. 

Sunset  and  evening  star 

And  one  clear  call  for  me, 
And  may  there  be  no  moaning  of  the  bar 
•  When  I  put  out  to  sea. 

The  desire  for  sympathy  and  the  wish  for  friendship 
are  in  his  heart,  but  the  fever  of  unrest  and 
the  spirit  of  revolt  are  gone.  His  heart, 
his  hope,  his  faith,  his  life,  are 
freely  laid  on  the  al- 
tar of  Eternal 
Love. 


t 


7? 


/ 


Robert  Burns 


ROBERT  BURNS 


TO  JEANIE. 

Come,  let  me  take  thee  to  my  breast, 
And  pledge  we  ne'er  shall  sunder; 

And  I  shall  spurn,  as  vilest  dust, 
The  warld's  wealth  and  grandeur. 

And  do  I  hear  my  Jeanie  own 
That  equal  transports  move  her  ? 

I  ask  for  dearest  life,  alone, 
That  I  may  live  to  love  her. 

Thus  in  my  arms,  wi'  all  thy  charms, 
I  clasp  my  countless  treasure  ; 

I  '11  seek  nae  mair  o'  heaven  to  share 
Than  sic  a  moment's  pleasure. 

And  by  thy  een,  sae  bonie  blue, 
I  swear  I  'm  thine  for  ever : 

And  on  thy  lips  I  seal  my  vow, 
And  break  it  shall  I  never. 


HE  business   of    Robert  Burns   was   ROBERT 
love-making.  BURNS 

All  love  is  good,  but  some  kinds  of 
love  are  better  than  others.  Through 
Burns'  penchant  for  falling  in  love  we 
have  his  songs.  A  Burns  bibliography 
is  simply  a  record  of  his  love  affairs, 
and  the  spasms  of  repentance  that 
followed  his  lapses  are  made  mani- 
fest in  religious  verse. 
Poetry  is  the  very  earliest  form  of 
literature,  and  is  the  natural  expres- 
sion of  a  person  in  love ;  and  I  sup- 
pose we  might  as  well  admit  the  fact 
at  once,  that  without  love  there 
would  be  no  poetry. 
Poetry  is  the  bill  and  coo  of  sex.  All 
poets  are  lovers,  and  all  lovers,  either 
actual  or  potential,  are  poets.  Potential 
poets  are  the  people  who  read  poetry ; 
and  so  without  lovers  the  poet  would 
never  have  a  market  for  his  wares. 
If  you  have  ceased  to  be  moved  by 
religious  emotion ;  if  your  spirit  is  no 
longer  surged  by  music  ;  and  you  do 
not  linger  over  certain  lines  of  poetry, 
it  is  because  the  love  instinct  in  your 
heart  has  withered  to  ashes  of  roses. 
It  is  idle  to  imagine  Bobby  Burns  as 

73 


ROBERT  a  staid  member  of  the  Kirk;  had  he  a'  been,  there 
BURNS   would  now  be  no  Bobby  Burns. 

The  literary  ebullition  of  Robert  Burns,  he  himself  has 
told  us,  began  shortly  after  he  had  reached  the  age  of 
indiscretion ;  and  the  occasion  was  his  being  paired  in 
the  hay-field,  according  to  the  Scottish  custom,  with  a 
bonnie  lassie.  This  custom  of  pairing  still  endures,  and 
is  what  the  students  of  sociology  call  an  expeditious 
move.  The  Scotch  are  great  economists — the  greatest 
in  the  world.  Adam  Smith,  the  father  of  the  science  of 
economics,  was  a  Scotchman ;  and  Draper,  author  of 
"  A  History  of  Civilization,"  flatly  declares  that  Adam 
Smith's  "  Wealth  of  Nations  "  has  influenced  the  peo- 
ple of  Earth  for  good  more  than  any  book  ever  written 
— save  none. 

The  Scotch  are  great  conservators  of  energy. 
The  practice  of  pairing  men  and  women  in  the  hay- 
field  gets  the  work  done.  One  man  and  woman  going 
down  the  grass-grown  path  afield  might  linger  and 
dally  by  the  way.  They  would  never  make  hay,  but  a 
company  of  a  dozen  or  more  men  and  women  would 
not  only  reach  the  field,  but  do  a  lot  of  work.  In  Scot- 
land the  hay-harvest  is  short — when  the  grass  is  in 
bloom,  just  right  to  make  the  best  hay,  it  must  be  cut. 
And  so  the  men  and  women,  the  girls  and  boys,  sally 
forth.  It  is  a  jolly  picnic  time,  looked  forward  to  with 
fond  anticipation,  and  gazed  back  upon  with  sweet,  sad 
memories,  or  otherwise,  as  the  case  may  be. 
But  they  all  make  hay  while  the  sun  shines,  and  count 

74 


it  joy.  Liberties  are  allowed  during  haying-time  that  ROBERT 
otherwise  would  be  declared  scandalous  ;  during  hay-  BURNS 
ing-time  the  Kirk  waives  her  censor's  right,  and  priest 
and  people  mingle  joyously.  Wives  are  not  jealous 
during  hay-harvest,  and  husbands  never  fault-finding, 
because  they  each  get  even  by  allowing  a  mutual  li- 
cense. In  Scotland  during  haying-time  every  married 
man  works  alongside  of  some  other  man's  wife.  To  the 
psychologist  it  is  somewhat  curious  how  the  desire  for 
propriety  is  overridden  by  a  stronger  desire — the  desire 
for  the  shilling.  The  Scotch  farmer  says,  "  anything  to 
get  the  hay  in  " — and  by  loosening  a  bit  the  strict 
bands  of  social  custom  the  hay  is  harvested. 
In  the  hay-harvest  the  law  of  natural  selection  holds  ; 
partners  are  often  arranged  for  weeks  in  advance  ;  and 
trysts  continue  year  after  year.  Old  lovers  meet,  touch 
hands  in  friendly  scuffle  for  a  fork,  drink  from  the  same 
jug,  recline  at  noon  and  eat  lunch  in  the  shade  of  a 
friendly  stack,  &  talk  to  heart's  content  as  they  Maud 
Muller  on  a  summer's  day. 

Of  course  this  joyousness  of  the  haying-time  is  not 
wholly  monopolized  by  the  Scotch.  Have  n't  you  seen 
the  jolly  haying  parties  in  Southern  Germany,  France, 
Switzerland  and  the  Tyrol  ?  How  the  bright  costumes 
of  the  men  and  the  jaunty  attire  of  the  women  gleam 
in  the  glad  sunshine  ! 

But  the  practice  of  pairing  is  carried  to  a  degree  of  per- 
fection in  Scotland  that  I  have  not  noticed  elsewhere. 
Surely  it  is  a  great  economic  scheme !  It  is  like  that  in- 

75 


ROBERT  vention  of  a  Connecticut  man,  which  utilizes  the  ebb 

BURNS  and  flow  of  the  ocean  tides  to  turn  a  grist-mill.  And  it 

seems  queer  that  no  one  has  ever  attempted  to  utilize 

the  waste  of  dynamic  force  involved  in  the  maintain- 

ance  of  the  Company  Sofa. 

In  Ayrshire,  I  have  started  out  with  a  haying  party  of 
twenty — ten  men  and  ten  women — at  six  o'clock  in  the 
morning  and  ^vorked  until  six  at  night.  I  never  worked 
so  hard,  nor  did  so  much.  All  day  long  there  was  a  fire 
of  jokes  and  jolly  jibes,  interspersed  with  song,  while 
beneath   all  ran  a  gentle   hum  of  confidential  inter- 
change of  thought.  The  man  who  owned  the  field  was 
there  to  direct  our  efforts,  and  urge  us  on  in  well  doing 
by  merry  raillery,  threat,  and  joyous  rivalry. 
The  point  I  make  is  this — we  did  the  work.  Take  heed, 
ye  Captains  of  Industry  &  note  this  truth,  that  where 
men  and  women  work  together,  under  right  influences, 
much  good  is  accomplished,  &  the  work  is  pleasurable. 
i^  Of  course  there  are  vinegar-faced  philosophers  who 
say  that  the  Scotch  custom  of  pairing  young  men  and 
maidens  in  the  hay-field  is  not  without  its  effect  on 
esoterics,  also  on  vital  statistics  ;  &  I  'm  willing 
to  admit  there   may  be   danger  in   the 
scheme,  but  life  is  a  dangerous 
business    anyway — few 
indeed  get  out  of 
it  alive. 


76 


URNS  succeeded  in  his  love- 
making  &  succeeded  in  poetry, 
but  at  everything  else  he  was 
a  failure.  He  failed  as  a  farmer, 
a  father,  a  friend,  in  society,  as 
a  husband,  and  in  business. 
From  his  twenty-third  year  his 
days  were  passed  in  sinning 
and  repenting. 

Poetry  and  love-making  should 
be  carried  on  with  caution  :  they  form  a  terrific  tax  on 
life's  forces.  Most  poets  die  young,  not  because  the 
gods  especially  love  them,  but  because  life  is  a  bank 
account,  and  to  wipe  out  your  balance  is  to  have  your 
checks  protested.  The  excesses  of  youth  are  drafts 
payable  at  maturity.  Chatterton  dead  at  eighteen,  Keats 
at  twenty-six,  Shelley  at  thirty-three,  Byron  at  thirty- 
six,  Poe  at  forty,  and  Burns  at  thirty-seven  are  the 
rule.  When  drafts  made  by  the  men  mentioned  became 
due,  there  was  no  balance  to  their  credit  and  Charon 
beckoned  ^^^ 

Most  life  insurance  companies  now  ask  the  applicant 
this  question,  "Do  you  write  poetry  to  excess?" 
Shakespeare,  to  be  sure,  clung  to  life  until  he  was  fifty- 
three,  but  this  seems  the  limit.  Dickens  and  Thackeray, 
senile  and  tottering,  died  at  the  same  age  Shakespeare 
died.  Of  course  I  know  that  Browning,  Tennyson, 
Morris  and  Bryant  lived  to  a  fair  old  age,  but  this  was 
on  borrowed  time,  for  in  the  early  life  of  each  there 

77 


ROBERT 
BURNS 


ROBERT  was  a  hiatus  of  from  ten  to  eighteen  years,  when  the 
BURNS  men  never  wrote  a  line,  nor  touched  a  drop  of  any- 
thing, bravely  eschewing  all  honey  from  Hymettus. 
Then  the  four  men  last  named  were  all  happily  mar- 
ried, and  married  life  is  favorable  to  longevity,  but  not 
to  poetry.  As  a  rule  only  single  men,  or  those  unhap- 
pily mated,  make  love  and  write  poetry.  Men  hap- 
pily married  make  money,  cultivate  content, 
and  evolve  an  aldermanic  front,  but  love 
and  poetry  are  symptoms  of  unrest. 
Thus   is    Emerson's    proposition 
partially  proved,  that  in  life  all 
things  are  bought  &  must 
be  paid  for  with  a  price 
— even  success  & 
happiness. 


78 


JURNS  once  explained  to  Thomas  ROBERT 
Moore  that  the  first  fine,  care-  BURNS 
less  rapture  of  his  song  was 
awakened  into  being  when  he 
was  sixteen  years  old,  by  *'  a 
bonie  sweet  sonsie  lass  "  whom 
we  now  know  as  •*  Handsome 
Nell."  Her  other  name  to  us  is 
vapor,  and  history  is  silent  as  to 
her  life-pilgrimage.  Whether 
she  lived  to  realize  that  she  had  first  given  voico 
to  one  of  the  great  singers  of  earth — of  this  we  are 
also  ignorant.  She  was  one  year  younger  than  Burns, 
and  little  more  than  a  child  when  she  and  Bobby  lag- 
ged behind  the  troop  of  tired  hay-makers,  and  walked 
home,  hand  in  hand,  in  the  gloaming  i^  Here  is  one  of 
the  stanzas  addressed  to  *'  Handsome  Nell:  " 

She  dresses  all  so  clean  and  neat, 
Both  decent  and  genteel, 
And  then  there  's  something  in  her  gait 
Makes  any  dress  look  weel. 

And  how  could  Nell  then  ever  guess  why  her  cheeks 
burned  scarlet,  and  why  she  was  so  sorry  when  haying- 
time  was  over  ?  She  was  sweet,  innocent,  artless  and 
their  love  was  very  natural,  tender,  innocent.  It's  a  pity 
that  all  loves  cannot  remain  in  just  that  idyllic  milk- 
maid stage,  where  the  girls  and  boys  awaken  in  the 
early  morning  with  the  birds,  and  hasten  forth  bare- 
foot across  the  dewy  fields  to  find  the  cows.  But  love 

79 


ROBERT  never  tarries.  Love  is  progressive  ;  it  cannot  stand  still. 
BURNS  I  have  heard  of  the  •*  passiveness  "  of  woman's  love, 
but  the  passive  woman  is  only  one  who  does  not  love 
— she  merely  consents  to  have  affection  lavished  upon 
her.  When  I  hear  of  a  passive  woman,  I  always  think 
of  the  befuddled  sailor  who  once  saw  one  of  those 
dummy  dress  frames,  all  duly  clothed  in  a  flaming 
bombazine  (I  think  it  was  bombazine)  in  front  of  a 
clothing  establishment.  The  sailor,  mistaking  the  dum- 
my for  a  near  and  dear  lady  friend,  embraced  the  wire 
apparatus  and  imprinted  a  resounding  smack  on  the 
chaste  plaster-Paris  cheek.  Meeting  the  sure-enough 
lady  shortly  after  he  upbraided  her  for  her  cold  pas- 
sivity on  the  occasion  named. 

A  passive  woman — one  who  consents  to  be  loved — 
should  seek  occupation  among  those  worthy  firms  who 
warrant  a  fit  in  ready  made  gowns,  or  money  refunded. 
1^  Love  is  progressive — it  hastens  onward  like  the 
brook  hurrying  to  the  sea.  They  say  that  love  is  blind : 
love  may  be  short-sighted,  or  inclined  to  strabismus, or 
see  things  all  out  of  their  true  proportion,  magnifying 
pleasant  little  ways  into  seraphic  virtues,  but  love  is 
not  really  blind — the  bandage  is  never  so  tight  but  that 
it  can  peep.  The  only  kind  of  love  that  is  really  blind 
and  deaf  is  Platonic  love.  Platonic  love  has  n't  the 
slightest  idea  where  it  is  going,  and  so  there  are  sur- 
prises and  shocks  in  store  for  it.  The  other  kind,  with 
eyes  wide  open,  is  better.  I  know  a  man  who  has  tried 
both  il|b  Love  is  progressive.  All  things  that  live  should 
80 


progress.  To  stand  still  is  to  retreat,  and  to  retreat  is  ROBERT 
death  i^  Love  dies,  of  course.  All  things  die,  or  be-  BURNS 
come  something  else.  And  often  they  become  something 
else  by  dying.  Behold  the  eternal  Paradox !  The  love 
that  evolves  into  a  higher  form  is  the  better  kind.  Na- 
ture is  intent  on  evolution,  yet  of  the  myriad  of  spores 
that  cover  earth,  most  of  them  are  doomed  to  death  ; 
and  of  the  countless  rays  sent  out  by  the  sun,  the 
number  that  fall  athwart  this  planet  are  infinitesimal. 
Edward  Carpenter  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  dis- 
appointed love,  that  is,  love  that  is  ••  lost,"  often  affects 
the  individual  for  the  highest  good.  Love  in  its  essence 
is  a  spiritual  emotion,  and  its  office  seems  to  be  an  in- 
terchange of  thought  and  feeling  ;  but  often  thwarted 
in  its  object  it  becomes  general,  transforms  itself  into 
sympathy,  and  embracing  a  v/orld,  goes  out  to  and 
blesses  all  mankind. 

Very,  very  rare  is  the  couple  that  have  the  sense  and 
poise  to  allow  passion  just  enough  mulberry  leaves,  so 
it  will  spin  a  beautiful  silken  thread,  out  of  which  a 
Jacob's  ladder  can  be  constructed,  reaching  to  the  In- 
finite. Most  lovers  in  the  end  wear  love  to  a  fringe, 
and  there  remains  no  ladder  with  angels  ascending  and 
descending — not  even  a  dream  of  a  ladder.  Instead  of 
the  silken  ladder  on  which  one  can  mount  to  Heaven, 
there  is  usually  a  dark,  dank  road  to  nowhere  over 
which  is  thrown  a  package  of  letters  &  trinkets,  all  fas- 
tened 'round  with  a  white  ribbon,  tied  in  a  lover's  knot. 
The  many  loves  of  Robert  Burns  all  ended  in  a  black 

8x 


ROBERT  jumping-ofF-place,   and  before  he  had  reached  high 
BURNS  noon,  he  tossed  over  the  last  bundle  of  white-ribboned 
missives  and  tumbled  in  after  them.  The  life  of 
Burns  is  a  tragedy,  through  which  are  inter- 
spersed sparkling  scenes  of  gayety,  as  if  to 
retrieve  the  depth  of  bitterness  that 
would   otherwise  be  unbearable. 
Go  ask  Mary  Morison,  High- 
land Mary,  Agnes  McLe- 
hosc,  Betty  Alison,  or 
Jean    Armour ! 


8a 


[HE  poems  of  Robert  Burns  fall 
easily  into  four  divisions. 
First,  those  that  were  written 
while  he  was  warmly  wooing 
the  object  of  his  affection. 
Second,  those  written  after  he 
had  won  her. 

Third,  those  written  when  he 
failed  to  win  her. 
Fourth,  those  written  when  he 
felt  it  his  duty  to  write,  and  really  had  nothing  to  say. 
i^  The  first  named  were  written  because  he  could  not 
help  it,  and  are,  for  the  most  part,  rarely  excellent. 
They  are  joyous,  rapturous,  sprightly,  dancing,  and 
filled  with  references  to  sky,  clouds,  trees,  fruit,  grain, 
birds  and  flowers.  Birds  and  flowers,  by  the  way,  are 
peculiarly  lovers'  properties.  The  song  and  the  plumage 
of  birds,  and  the  color  and  perfume  of  flowers  are  all 
distinctly  sex  manifestations.  Robert  Burns  sang  his 
songs  just  as  the  bird  wings  and  sings,  and  for  the  same 
reason.  Sex  holds  flrst  place  in  the  thought  of  Nature  ; 
and  sex  in  the  minds  of  men  and  women  holds  a  much 
larger  place  than  most  of  us  are  willing  to  admit.  All 
religious  emotion  and  all  art  are  born  of  the  sex  instinct. 
il|li  The  second  variety  of  Burns'  poems,  written  after 
he  had  won  her,  are  touched  with  religious  emotion, 
or  filled  with  vain  regret  and  deep  remorse,  as  the  case 
may  be,  all  owing  to  the  quality  and  kind  of  success 
achieved,  and  the  influence  of  the  Dog  Star. 

83 


ROBERT 
BURNS 


ROBERT  Burns  wrote  several  deeply  religious  poems.  Now, 
BURNS  men  are  very  seldom  really  religious  and  contrite,  ex- 
cepting after  an  excess.  Following  a  debauch  a  man 
signs  the  pledge,  vows  chastity,  writes  fervently  of  as- 
ceticism and  the  need  of  living  in  the  spirit  and  not  in 
the  senses.  Good  pictures  show  best  on  a  dark  back- 
ground ^yf>^ 

"The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night,"  perhaps  the  most 
quoted  of  any  of  Burns*  poems,  is  plainly  the  result  of 
a  terrible  tip  to  t'other  side.  The  author  had  gone  so 
far  in  the  direction  of  Venusburg  that  he  resolved  on 
getting  back,  and  living  thereafter  a  staid  &  proper  life. 
l9>  In  order  to  reform  you  must  have  an  ideal,  &  the  ideal 
of  Burns,  on  the  occasion  of  having  exhausted  all  ca- 
pacity for  sin,  is  embodied  in  the  ••  Saturday  Night." 
It  is  a  beautiful  dream.  The  real  Scottish  cotter  is  quite 
another  kind  of  a  person.  The  religion  of  the  live  cot- 
ter is  well  seasoned  with  fear,  malevolence  and  absurd 
dogmatism.  The  amount  of  love,  patience,  excellence 
and  priggishness  shown  in  "  The  Cotter's  Saturday 
Night "  never  existed  excepting  in  a  poet's  dream. 
In  stanza  Number  Ten  of  that  particular  poem  is  a 
bit  of  unconscious  autobiography  that  might  as  well 
ha'  been  omitted,  but  in  leaving  it  in,  Burns  was  loyal 
to  the  thought  that  surged  through  his  brain. 
People  who  are  not  scientific  in  their  speech  often 
speak  of  the  birds  being  happy.  My  opinion  is  that  birds 
are  not  any  more  happy  than  men — probably  not  as 
much  so.  Many  birds,  like  the  English  sparrow  and 

84 


blue  jay,  quarrel  all  day  long.  Come  to  think  of  it,  I  be-  ROBERT 
lieve  that  man  is  happier  than  the  birds.  He  has  a  sense  BURNS 
of  remorse,  and  this  suggests  a  reformation,  and  from 
the  idea  of  reformation  comes  the  picturing  of  an  ideal. 
This  exercise  of  the  imagination  is  pleasure,  for  in- 
deed there  is  a  certain  satisfaction  in  every  form  of  ex- 
ercise of  the  faculties.  There  is  a  certain  pleasure  in 
pain  :  for  pain  is  never  all  pain.  And  sin  sometimes  is 
not  wholly  bad,  if  through  it  we  pass  into  a  higher  life, 
the  life  of  the  spirit. 

Anything  is  better  than  the  Dead  Sea  of  neutral  noth- 
ingness, wherein  a  man  merely  avoids  sin  by  doing 
nothing  and  being  nothing.  The  stirring  of  the  imagi- 
nation by  sorrow  for  sin,  sometimes  causes  the  soul  to 
wing  a  far-reaching  upward  flight. 
Asceticism  is  often  only  a  form  of  sensuality  :  the  man 
finds  satisfaction  in  overcoming  the  flesh.  And  wher- 
ever you  find  asceticism  you  find  potential  passion — a 
smouldering  volcano  held  in  check  by  a  devotion  to 
duty ;  and  a  gratification  is  oft  found  in  fidelity. 
The  moral  and  religious  poems  of  Burns  were  written 
in  a  desire  to  work  off  a  fit  of  depression,  and  make 
amends  for  folly.  They  are  sincere  and  often  very  ex- 
cellent. Great  preachers  have  often  been  great  sinners, 
and  the  sermons  that  have  moved  men  most  are  often 
a  direct  recoil  from  sin  on  part  of  the  preacher.  Re- 
morse finds  play  in  preaching  repentance.  When  a  man 
talks  much  about  a  virtue,  be  sure  that  he  is  clutching 
for  it.  Temperance  fanatics  are  men  with  a  taste  for 

85 


ROBERT  strong  drink,  trying  hard  to  keep  sober  i^  The  moral  & 
BURNS  religious  poems  of  Robert  Burns  are  not  equal  to  his 
love  songs.  The  love  songs  are  free,  natural,  untram- 
meled  &  unrestrained  ;  while  his  religious  poems  have  a 
vein  of  rotten  warp  running  through  them  in  the  way 
of  affectation  and  pretence.  From  this  I  infer  that  sin  is 
natural,  and  remorse  partially  so.  In  Burns'  moral 
poems  the  author  tries  to  win  back  the  favor  of  re- 
spectable people,  which  he  had  forfeited.  In  them  there 
is  a  violence  of  direction  ;  and  all  violence  of  direction 
— all  endeavors  to  please  and  placate  certain  people  are 
fatal  to  an  artist.  You  must  work  to  please  only  your- 
self r€^» 

Work  to  please  yourself  and  you  develop  and  strength- 
en the  artistic  conscience.  Cling  to  that  and  it  shall  be 
your  mentor  in  times  of  doubt :  you  need  no  other. 
There  are  writers  who  would  scorn  to  write  a  muddy 
line,  and  would  hate  themselves  for  a  year  and  a  day 
should  they  dilute  their  thought  with  the  platitude  of 
the  fear-ridden  peoples.  Be  yourself  and  speak  your 
mind  to-day,  though  it  contradict  all  you  have  said  be- 
fore. And  above  all,  in  art,  work  to  please  yourself — 
that  Other  Self  that  stands  over  and  behind  you  look- 
ing over  your  shoulder,  watching  your  every  act,  word 
and  deed — knowing  your  every  thought.  Michael  An- 
gelo  would  not  paint  a  picture  on  order.  "  I  have  a  crit- 
ic who  is  more  exacting  than  you,"  said  Meissonier — 
"  it  is  my  Other  Self." 

Rosa  Bonheur  painted  pictures  just  to  please  her  Other 
86 


Self,  and  never  gave  a  thought  of  anyone  else,  nor  ROBERT 
wanted  to  think  of  anyone  else,  and  having  painted  to  BURNS 
please  herself,  she  made  her  appeal  to  the  great  Com- 
mon Heart  of  humanity — the  tender,  the  noble,  the  re- 
ceptive, the  earnest.the  sympathetic,  the  loveable.That 
is  why  Rosa  Bonheur  stands  first  among  women  art- 
ists of  all  time  :  she  worked  to  please  her  Other  Self. 
1^  That  is  the  reason  Rembrandt,  who  lived  at  the 
same  time  Shakespeare  lived,  is  to-day  without  a  rival 
in  portraiture.  Ke  had  the  courage  to  make  an  enemy. 
When  at  work  he  never  thought  of  anyone  but  his 
Other  Self,  and  so  he  infused  soul  into  every  canvas. 
The  limpid  eyes  look  down  into  yours  from  the  walls  & 
tell  of  love,  pity,  earnestness  and  deep  sincerity.  Man, 
like  Deity,  creates  in  his  own  image,  and  when  he  por- 
trays someone  else,  he  pictures  himself,  too — this  pro- 
vided his  work  is  Art.  If  it  is  but  an  imitation  of  some- 
thing seen  somewhere,  or  done  by  someone  else,  or 
done  to  please  a  patron  with  money,  no  breath  of  life 
has  been  breathed  into  its  nostrils  and  it  is  nothing, 
save  possibly  dead  perfection — no  more. 
Is  it  easy  to  please  your  Other  Self?  Try  it  for  a  day. 
Begin  to-morrow  morning  and  say,  ♦*  This  day  I  will 
live  as  becomes  a  man.  I  will  be  filled  with  good  cheer 
and  courage.  I  will  do  what  is  right ;  I  will  work  for 
the  highest ;  I  will  put  soul  into  every  hand-grasp, 
every  smile,  every  expression — into  all  my  work.  I  will 
live  to  satisfy  my  Other  Self." 
Do  you  think  it  is  easy  ?  Try  it  for  a  day. 

87 


ROBERT  Robert  Burns  wrote  some  deathless  lines — lines  writ- 
BURNS  ten  out  of  the  freshness  of  his  heart,  simply  to  please 
himself,  with  no  furtive  eye  on  Dumfries,  Edinburgh, 
the  Kirk,  or  the  Unco  Gudes  of  Ayrshire  ;  &  these  are 
the  lines  that  have  given  him  his  place  in  the  world  of 
letters  ^€€^ 

The  other  day  I  was  made  glad  by  finding  that  John 
Burroughs,  Poet  &  Prophet,  says  that  the  male  thrush 
sings  to  please  himself,  out  of  pure  delight,  and  pleas- 
ing himself,  he  pleases  his  mate.  "  The  female,"  says 
Burroughs,  "  is  always  pleased  with  a  male  that  is 
pleased  with  himself." 

The  various  controversial  poems  (granting  for  argu- 
ment's sake  that  controversy  is  poetic)  were  written 
when  Burns  was  smarting  under  the  sense  of  defeat. 
These  show  a  sharp  insight  into  the  heart  of  things, 
and  a  lively  wit,  but  are  not  sufficient  foundation  on 
which  to  build  a  reputation.  Ali  Baba  can  do  as  well. 
Considering  the  fact  that  twice  as  many  people  make 
pilgrimages  to  the  grave  of  Burns  as  visit  the  grave  of 
Shakespeare,  &  that  his  poems  are  on  the  shelves 
of  every  library,  his  name  now  needs  no  defense. 
The  ores  are  very  seldom  found  pure,  and 
if  even  the  work  of  Deity  is  composite, 
why  should  we  be  surprised  that 
man.  His  creature,  should  ex- 
press himself  in  a  varying 
scale   of   excellence ! 

88 


[HERE  was  certainly  no  Jack 
FalstafF  about  Francis  Schlat- 
ter, whose  whitened  bones 
were  found  amid  the  alkali  dust 
of  the  desert,  a  few  months  ago 
— dead  in  an  endeavor  to  do 
without  meat  and  drink  for 
forty  days. 

Schlatter  purported,  and  be- 
lieved, that  he  was  the  re-incar- 
nation of  the  Messiah.  Letters  were  sent  to  him,  ad- 
dressed simply,  "  Jesus  Christ,  Denver,  Colorado,"  and 
he  walked  up  to  the  General  Delivery  window  &  asked 
for  them  with  a  confidence,  we  are  told,  that  relieved 
the  postmaster  of  a  grave  responsibility. 
Schlatter  was  no  mere  ordinary  pretender,  working  on 
the  superstitions  of  shallow-pated  people.  He  lived  up 
to  his  belief — took  no  money,  avoided  notoriety  when 
he  could,  and  the  proof  of  his  sincerity  lies  in  the  fact 
that  he  died  a  victim  to  it. 

Herbert  Spencer  has  said  all  about  the  Messianic  In- 
stinct that  there  is  to  say,  save  this — the  Messianic 
Instinct  first  had  its  germ  in  the  heart. of  a  woman. 
Every  woman  dreams  of  the  coming  of  the  Ideal  Man 
— the  man  who  will  give  her  protection,  even  to  giving 
up  his  life  for  her,  and  vouchsafe  peace  to  her  soul  i^ 
I  am  told  by  a  noted  Bishop  of  the  Catholic  Church 
that  most  women  who  become  nuns  are  prompted  to 
take  their  vows  solely  through  the  occasion  of  an  un- 

89 


ROBERT 
BURNS 


ROBERT  requited  love.  They  become  the  bride  of  the  Church 
BURNS  and  find  their  highest  joy  in  following  the  will  of  Christ. 
He  is  their  only  Lord  and  Master. 

The  terms  of  endearment  one  hears  at  prayer  meetings, 
••  Blessed  Jesus,"  "  Dear  Jesus,"  •*  Loving  Jesus," 
♦'  Elder  Brother,"  '•  Patient,  gentle  Jesus,"  etc.,  were 
first  used  by  women  in  an  ecstacy  of  religious  trans- 
portation. And  the  thought  of  Jesus  as  a  loving  '*  per- 
sonal Savior,"  would  die  from  the  face  of  the  earth  did 
not  woman  keep  it  alive.  The  religious  nature  and  the 
sex  nature  are  closely  akin ;  no  psychologist  can  tell 
where  one  ends  and  the  other  begins. 
There  may  be  wooden  women  in  the  world,  &  of  these 
I  will  not  speak,  but  every  strong,  pulsing,  feeling, 
thinking  woman  goes  through  life,  seeking  the  Ideal 
Man.  Whether  she  is  married  or  single,  rich  or  poor, 
old  or  young,  every  new  man  she  meets  is  interesting 
to  her,  because  she  feels  in  some  mysterious  way,  that 
possibly  he  is  the  One. 

Of  course,  I  know  that  every  good  man,  too,  seeks  the 
Ideal  Woman — but  that  deserves  another  chapter. 
The  only  woman  in  whose  heart  there  is  not  the  live, 
warm,  Messianic  Instinct,  is  the  wooden  woman, 
and  the  one  who  believes  she  has  already  found  him. 
But  this  latter  is  holding  an  illusion  that  soon  vanishes 
with  possession. 

That  pale,  low-voiced,  gentle  and  insane  man,  Francis 
Schlatter,  was  followed  at  times  by  troops  of  women. 
These  women  believed  in  him  and  loved  him — in  dif- 
90 


V 


ferent  ways,  of  course,  and  with  passion,  varying  ac-   ROBERT 
cording  to  temperament  and  the  domestic  environment  BURNS 
already  existing.  To  love  deeply  is  a  matter  of  propin- 
quity and  opportunity. 

One  woman,  whom  '•  The  Healer  "  had  cured  of  a  lin- 
gering disease,  loved  this  man  with  a  wild,  mad,  ab- 
sorbing passion.  Chance  gave  her  the  opportunity.  He 
came  to  her  house,  cold,  hungry,  homeless,  sick.  She 
fed  him,  warmed  him,  looked  into  his  liquid  eyes,  sat 
at  his  feet  and  listened  to  his  voice — she  loved  him — 
and  partook  of  his  every  mental  delusion. 
This  woman  now  waits  and  watches  in  her  mountain 
home  for  his  return.  She  knows  the  coyotes  and  buz- 
zards picked  the  scant  flesh  from  his  starved  frame,  but 
she  says,  "  He  promised  he  would  come  back  to  me, 
and  he  will.  I  am  waiting  for  him  here." 
This  woman  writes  me  long  letters  from  her  solitude, 
telling  me  of  her  hopes  &  plans.  Just  why  all  the  cranks 
in  the  United  States  should  write  me  letters,  I  do  not 
know,  but  they  do — perhaps  there  is  a  sort  o'  fellow 
feeling.  This  woman  may  write  letters  to  others,  just 
as  she  does  to  me.  Of  this  I  do  not  know,  but  surely  I 
would  not  thus  make  public  the  heart  tragedy  told  me 
in  a  private  letter,  were  it  not  that  the  woman  herself 
has  printed  a  pamphlet,  setting  forth  her  faith  and  veil- 
ing only  those  things  into  which  it  is  not  our  right  to 
pry  >^^ 

This  Mary  Magdalene  believes  her  lover  was  the  Chosen 
Son  of  God,  and  that  the  Father  will  re-clothe  the  Son 

91 


ROBERT  in  a  new  garment  of  flesh  and  send  him  back  to  his  be- 
BURNS  loved.  So  she  watches  and  waits,  and  dresses  herself 
to  receive  him,  and  at  night  places  a  lighted  lantern  in 
the  window  to  guide  the  way. 
She  watches  and  waits. 

Other  women  wait  for  footsteps  that  will  never  come, 
&  listen  for  a  voice  that  will  never  be  heard.  All  'round 
the  world  there  is  a  sisterhood  of  such.  Some,  being 
wise,  lose  themselves  in  loving  service  to  others — in 
useful  work.  But  this  woman,  cut  in  the  wilds  of  New 
Mexico,  hugs  her  sorrow  to  her  heart,  and  feeds  her 
passion  by  recounting  it,  and  watches  away  the  leaden 
hours,  crying  aloud  to  all  who  will  listen:  "  He  is  not 
dead — he  is  not  dead  !  He  will  come  back  to  me !  He 
promised  it — he  will  come  back  to  me  !  This  long, 
dreary  waiting  is  only  a  test  of  my  loyalty  and  love  ! 
I  will  be  patient,  for  he  will  come  back  to  me  !  He  will 
come  back  to  me." 

This  world  would  be  a  sorry  place  if  most  men  con- 
ducted their  lives  on  the  Robert  Burns  plan.  Burns  was 
affectionate,  tender,  generous  and  kind  ;  but  he  was  not 
wise.  He  never  saw  the  future,  nor  did  he  know  that 
life  is  a  sequence,  and  if  you  do  this,  it  is  pretty  sure 
to  lead  to  that.  His  loves  were  largely  of  the  earth. 
Excess  was  a  part  of  his  wayward,  undisciplined  na- 
ture ;  and  that  constant  tendency  to  put  an  enemy  in 
his  mouth  to  steal  away  his  brains  bound  him  at  last, 
hand  and  foot. His  old  age  could  never  have  been  frosty, 
but  kindly— it  would  have  been  babbling,  irritable,  sen- 
92 


ile,  sickening.  Death  was  kind  and  reaped  him  young.  ROBERT 
1^  Sex  was  the  rock  on  which  Robert  Burns  split.  He   BURNS 
seemed  to  regard  pleasure-seeking  as  the  prime  end  of 
life,  and  in  this  he  was  not  so  very  far  removed  from 
the  prevalent  "civilized"  society  notion  of  marriage. 
But  it  is  a  fantasmal  idea,  and  makes  a  mock  of  mar- 
riage, serving  the  satirist  his  excuse. 
To  a  great  degree  the  race  is  yet  barbaric  and  as  a  peo- 
ple we  fail  utterly  to  touch  the  hem  of  the  garment  of 
Divinity.  We  have  been  mired  in  the  superstition  that 
sex  is  unclean,  and  therefore  honesty  and  expression 
in  love  matters  have  been  tabooed. 
But  the  day  will  yet  dawn  when  we  will  see  that  it 
takes  two  to  generate  thought ;  that  there  is  the  male 
man  and  the  female  man,  and  only  where  these  two 
walk  together  hand  in  hand  is  there  a  perfect  sanity 
and  a  perfect  physical,  moral  and  spiritual  health. 
We  will  yet  realize  that  a  sex  relationship  which  does 
not  symbol  a  spiritual  condition  is  sacrilege. 
We  reach  infinity  through  the  love  of  one,  and  loving 
this  one,  we  are  in  love  with  all.  And  this  condition  of 
mutual  sympathy,  trust,  reverence,  forbearance  and 
gentleness  that  can  exist  between  a  man  and  woman 
gives  the  only  hint  of  Heaven  that  mortals  ever  know. 
From  the  love  of  man  for  woman  we  guess  the  love  of 
God,  just  as  the  scientist  from  a  single  bone  constructs 
the  skeleton — aye !  and  then  clothes  it  in  a  complete 
garment. 
In  their  love  affairs  women  are  seldom  wise  nor  men 

9^ 


ROBERT  just.  How  should  we  expect  them  to  be  when  but  yes- 
BURNS  terday  Woman  was  a  chattel  and  man  a  slave-owner? 
Woman  won  by  diplomacy — that  is  to  say  by  trick- 
ery and  untruth,  and  man  had  his  way  through  force, 
and  neither  is  quite  willing  to  disarm.  An  amalgamated 
personality  is  the  rare  exception,  because  neither 
church,  state  nor  society  yet  fully  recognizes  the  fact 
that  spiritual  comradeship  and  the  marriage  of  the 
mind  constitute  the  only  Divine  mating.  Dr.  Blalock 
once  said  that  Robert  Burns  had  eyes  like  the  Christ. 
Women  who  looked  into  those  wide-open,  generous 
orbs  lost  their  hearts  in  the  liquid  depths. 
In  the  natures  of  Robert  Burns  and  Francis  Schlatter 
there  was  little  in  common ;  but  their  experiences  were 
alike  in  this  :  they  were  beloved  by  women.  Behind  him 
Burns  left  a  train  of  weeping  women — a  trail  of  broken 
hearts.  And  I  can  never  think  of  him  except  as  a  mere 
youth — "Bobby  Burns" — one  who  never  came  into 
man's  estate.  In  all  his  love-making  he  seemed  never 
to  really  benefit  any  woman,  nor  did  he  avail  himself 
of  the  many  mental  and  spiritual  excellences  of  wom- 
an's nature,  absorbing  them  into  his  own.  He  only 
played  a  devil's  tattoo  upon  her  emotions. 
If  Burns  knew  anything  of  the  beauty  and  excellence 
of  a  high  and  holy  friendship  between  a  thinking  man 
and  a  thinking  woman,  with  mutual  aims,  ideals  and 
ambitions,  he  never  disclosed  it.  The  love  of  a  man  for 
a  maid,  or  a  maid  for  a  man,  can  never  last,  unless 
these  two  mutually  love  a  third  something.  Then,  as 
94 


they  are  travelling  the  same  way,  they  may  move  for-  ROBERT 
ward  hand  in  hand,  mutually  sustained.  The  marriage   BURNS 
of  the  mind  is  the  only  compact  that  endures.  I 
love  you  because  you  love  the  things  that  I  love. 
That  man  alone  is  great  who  utilizes  the 
blessings  that  God  provides ;  and  of 
these  blessings  no  gift  equals  the 
gentle,    trusting  companion- 
ship of  a  good  woman. 


ROBERT  WS^fS^^HKM^^^^^  written  thus  far,  I  find 
BURNS  Kffl^^X!BSs^^%!!fl  ^^^*  already  I  have  reached  the 

limit  of  my  allotted  space. 
In  closing,  it  may  not  be  amiss 
for   me    to    state    that    Robert 
Burns  was  an  Irish  poet  whose 
parents  happened  to  be  Scotch. 
He  was  born  in  1759. 
He  died  in  1796,  and  is  buried  at 
Dumfries. 
His   mother  survived  him  thirty-eight  years,  passing 
out  in  1834.  Burns  left  four  sons,  each  of  whom  was 
often  pointed  out  as  the  son  of  his  father — but  none  of 
them  was. 

This  is  all  I  think  of,  at  present,  concerning  Robert 
Burns  v^" 

For  further  facts  I  must  refer  the  Gentle  Reader  to  the 
Encyclopedia  Brittanica,    a  compilation    that    I 
cheerfully  recommend,  it  having  been  vouched 
for  to  me  by  a  dear  friend,  a  clergyman  of 
East  Aurora,  who,  the  past  year,  pe- 
rused the  entire  work,  from  A  to 
Z,  reading  five  hours  a  day, 
&  therefore  is  compe- 
tent to  speak. 


96 


John  Milton, 


JOHN  MILTON 


Thus  with  the  year 
Seasons  return ;  but  not  to  me  returns 
Day,  or  the  sweet  approach  of  even  or  mom, 
Or  sight  of  vernal  bloom,  or  summer's  rose, 
Or  fiocks,  or  herds,  or  human  face  divine  ; 
But  cloud  instead,  and  ever-during  dark 
Surrounds  me ;  from  the  cheerful  ways  of  men 
Cut  off,  and  for  the  book  of  knowledge  fair 
Presented  with  a  universal  blank 
Of  Nature's  works,  to  me  expunged  and  rased. 
And  wisdom  at  one  entrance  quite  shut  out. 
So  much  the  rather  thou.  Celestial  Light, 
Shine  inward,  and  the  mind  through  all  her  powers 
Irradiate ;  there  plant  eyes,  all  mist  from  thence 
Purge  and  disperse,  that  I  may  see  and  tell 
Of  things  invisible  to  mortal  sight. 

— Paradise  Lost :  Book  IIL 


HAKESPEARE  and  Milton  lived  at 
the  same  time.  John  Milton  was  eight 
years  old  when  William  Shakespeare 
died.  The  Miltons  lived  in  Bread 
j  Street,  and  out  of  the  back  garret 
^^  window  of  their  house  could  catch 
a  glimpse  of  the  Globe  Theatre. 
The  father  of  John  Milton  might  have 
kno^vn  Shakespeare  —  might  have 
dined  with  him  at  the  **  Mermaid," 
played  skittles  with  him  on  Hamp- 
stead  Heath, fished  v^ith  him  from  the 
same  boat  in  the  river  at  Richmond ; 
and  John  Milton,  the  lawyer,  might 
have  discreetly  schemed  for  passes 
to  the  "Globe"  and  gone  with  his 
boy  John,  Junior,  to  see  ♦*  As  You 
Like  It"  played,  with  the  Master 
himself  in  the  role  of  old  Adam. 
Bread  Street  was  just  off  Cheapside, 
where  the  Mermaid  Tavern  stood, 
and  where  Beaumont,  Fletcher,  Ben 
Jonson  and  other  roysterers  often 
lingered  and  made  the  midnight  echo 
with  their  mirth.  In  all  probability, 
ohn  Milton,  Senior,  father  of  John 
Milton,  Junior,  knew  Shakespeare 
well.  But  the  Miltons  owned  their 
home,  were  rich,   influential,    emi- 


JOHN 
MILTON 


97 


JOHN  nently  respectable,  attended  Saint  Giles  Church,  and 
MILTON  really  did  n't  care  to  cultivate  the  society  of  play- 
actors who  kept  bad  hours,  slept  in  the  theatre,  and 
had  meal-tickets  at  half  a  dozen  taverns. 
There  were  six  children  born  into  the  Milton  family, 
three  of  whom  died  in  infancy.  Of  the  survivors,  the 
eldest  was  Anne,  the  second  John,  the  third  Chris- 
topher. 

Anne  was  strong,  robust  &  hearty ;  John  was  slender, 
pale,  with  dreamy  dark  gray  eyes  and  a  head  too  big 
for  his  body ;  Christopher  was  so-so.  And,  in  pass- 
ing, it  is  well  to  explain,  once  for  all,  that  Christopher 
made  his  way  straight  to  the  front  in  life,  taking  up  his 
father's  business,  being  appointed  a  Court  Officer,  then 
promoted  to  the  Woolsack,  became  rich,  cultivated  a 
double  chin,  was  knighted  &  passed  out  full  of  honors. 
The  chief  worriment  and  cause  of  shame  in  the  life  of 
Sir  Christopher  Milton  came  from  the  unseemly  con- 
1  duct  of  his  brother  John,  who  was  much  given  to  pro- 
ducing political  and  theological  pamphlets.  And  once 
in  desperation  Sir  Christopher  Milton  requested  John 
Milton  to  change  his  family  name,  that  the  tribe  of 
Milton  might  be  saved  the  disgrace  of  having  in  it  **  a 
traducer  of  the  State,  an  enemy  of  the  King,  and  a 
falsifier  of  Truth." 

Sir  Christopher  Milton  was  an  excellent  and  ^vorthy 
man,  and  I  must  apologize  for  not  giving  him  more  at- 
tention at  this  time,  but  lack  of  space  forbids. 
Sickly  boys  who  are  wise  beyond  their  years  are  ever 
98 


the  pets  of  big  sisters,  and  the  object  of  loving,  jealous,  JOHN 
zealous  care  on  the  part  of  their  mothers.  John  Milton   MILTON 
talked  like  an  oracle  while  yet  a  child,  and  one  biogra- 
pher records  that  even  as  a  babe  he  sometimes  mildly 
reproved  his  parents  for  levity. 

He  was  a  precocious  child,  and  have  we  not  been  told 
that  precocity  does  not  train  on  ?  But  this  boy  was  an 
exception.  He  was  incarnated  into  a  family  that  prized 
music,  poetry,  philosophy,  and  yet  held  fast  to  the 
Christian  faith.  His  father  set  psalms  to  music,  his 
sister  wrote  madrigals,  and  his  mother  played  sweet 
strains  on  a  harp  to  waken  him  at  morningtide.  The 
entire  household  united  in  a  devotion  to  poetry  and  art. 
Possibly  this  atmosphere  of  high  thinking  was  too 
rarified  for  real  comfort — the  gravity  of  the  situation 
being  sustained  only  by  a  stern  effort. 
But  no  matter — father,  mother  and  sister  joined  hands 
to  make  the  pale,  handsome  boy  a  prodigy  of  learning 
— one  that  would  surprise  the  world  and  leave  his  im- 
press on  the  time. 
And  they  succeeded. 

Of  the  three  Milton  children  that  passed  away  in 
childhood,  I  cannot  but  think  that  they  succumbed  to 
overtraining,  being  crammed  quite  after  the  German 
custom  of  stuffing  geese  so  as  to  produce  that  delicious 
diseased  tidbit  known  to  gourmets  as  pate  de  foie  gras. 
John  Milton  stood  the  cramming  process  like  a  true 
hero.  His  parents  set  him  apart  for  the  Church — there- 
fore he  must  be  learned  in  books,  familiar  with  lan- 

99 


JOHN    guages,  versed  in  theories.  They  desired   he  should 
MILTON    have  knowledge,  v^rhich  they  did  not  know  was  quite  a 
different  thing  from  wisdom. 

So  the  boy  had  a  private  tutor  in  Greek  and  Latin  at 
nine  years  of  age,  and  even  then  began  to  write  verse. 
At  ten  years  of  age  his  father  had  the  lad's  portrait 
painted  by  that  rare  and  thrifty  Dutchman,  Cornelius 
Jansen.  We  have  this  picture  now  and  it  reveals  the 
pale,  grave,  winsome  face  with  the  flowing  curls  that 
we  always  recognize. 

No  expense  or  pains  were  spared  in  the  boy's  educa- 
tion. The  time  w^as  divided  up  for  him  as  the  hours  are 
for  a  soldier.  One  tutor  after  another  took  him  in  hand 
during  the  day,  but  the  change  of  study  and  a  glad  res- 
pite of  an  hour  in  the  morning  and  the  same  in  the 
afternoon,  for  music,  bore  him  up. 
He  was  the  pride  of  his  parents,  the  delight  of  his 
tutors. 

Three  years  were  spent  at  St.  Paul's  School ;  then  he 
was  sent  to  Cambridge.  From  there  he  wrote  to  his 
mother,  •*  I  am  penetrating  into  the  inmost  recesses 
of  the  Muses ;  climbing  high  Olympus,  visiting  the 
green  pastures  of  Parnassus  and  drinking  deep  from 
Pierian  Springs." 

This  is  terrible  language  for  a  child  of  fourteen.  A  boy 
v<rho  would  talk  like  that  now  would  be  a  proper  and 
fit  target  for  cabbages.  And  no  fond  parent  must  for  a 
moment  imagine  that  by  following  the  system  laid  out 
for  the  education  of  John  Milton,  can  a  John  Milton 

100 


be  produced.  The  Miltonian  curriculum  in  use  to-day  JOHN 
would  be  sufficient  excuse  for  action  on  the  part  of  the  MILTON 
Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children. 
But  John  Milton,  the  weak-eyed  boy  with  the  chronic 
headache,  had  a  deal  of  whip-cord  fiber  in  his  make- 
up. He  stood  the  test  and  grubbed  at  his  books  every 
night  until  the  clocks  tolled  twelve.  He  was  born  at  a 
peculiar  time,  being  the  child  of  the  Reformation  mar- 
ried to  the  Renaissance.  The  toughness  and  grimness 
of  Calvin  were  united  in  him  with  the  tenderness  of 
Erasmus.  From  out  the  Universal  Energy,  of  which 
v^e  are  particles,  he  had  called  into  his  being  quali- 
ties so  diverse  that  they  seem  never  to  have  been 
before  or  since  united  in  one  person. 
He  remained  at  Cambridge  seven  years.  The  beauty  of 
his  countenance  had  increased  so  that  he  was  as  one 
set  apart.  His  finely  chiseled  features,  framed  in  their 
flowing  curls,  held  the  attention  of  every  person  he 
met.  A  writer  of  the  time  described  him  as  **  a  grave 
and  sober  person,  but  one  not  wholly  ignorant  of  his 
own  parts." 

There  is  a  sly  touch  in  this  sentence  that  sheds  light 
upon  ♦*  The  Lady  of  Christ's."  John  Milton  was  a  bit 
of  a  poseur,  as  Schopenhauer  declares  all  great  men 
are  and  ever  have  been.  With  the  masterly  mind  goes 
a  touch  of  the  fakir.  Milton  knew  his  power — he  gloried 
in  this  bright  blade  of  the  intellect. 
He  was  handsome — and  he  knew  it. 
And  yet  we  will  not  cavil  at  his  velvet  coats,  or  laces, 

xox 


JOHN  or  the  golden  chain  that  adorned  his  slender,  shapely 
MILrTON  person.  These  things  were  only  the  transient,  spring- 
time adornments  that  passion  puts  forth. 
And  yet  I  see  that  one  writer  mentions  the  chaste  and 
ascetic  quality  of  Milton's  early  life  as  proof  of  a  cold 
and  measured  nature.  Seemingly  the  writer  does  not 
know  that  intense  feeling  often  finds  a  gratification  in 
asceticism,  and  that  vows  of  chastity  are  proof  of  pas- 
sion. There  are  many  ways  of  working  off"  one's  sur- 
plus energy — Milton  was  married  to  his  work.  He 
traversed  the  vast  fields  of  Classic  Literature,  read  in 
the  original  from  Greek,  Hebrew,  Syriac,  French, 
Spanish,  Latin  and  Italian.  He  delved  in  abstruse 
mathematics,  studied  music  as  a  science  and  labored 
at  theology.  In  fact,  he  came  to  know  so  much  of  all 
religions  that  he  had  faith  in  none.  He  seemed  to  view 
religion  in  the  cold,  calculating  light  of  a  syllogistic 
problem — not  as  a  warm,  pulsing  motive  in  life.  His 
real  religion  was  music,  a  fact  he  once  frankly 
acknowledged. 

On  the  pinions  of  music  he  was  carried  out  and  away 
beyond  the  boundaries  of  time  and  space,  and  there 
he  found  the  rest  for  his  soul,  without  which  he  would 
have  sunk  to  earth  and  been  covered  by  the  kindly, 
drifting  leaves  of  oblivion. 

For  some,  the  secrets  of  music,  the  wonder  of  love, 
and  the  misty,  undefined  prayers  of  the  soul  constitute 
true  religion.  When  you  place  a  creed  in  a  crucible 
and  afterward  study  the  particles  on  a  slide  encased 

102 


in  balsam,  you  are  apt  to  get  a  residuum  or  something  JOHN 
— a  something  that  does  not  satisfy  the  heart.  MILTON 

Milton  got  well  acquainted  with  theology.  It  was  in- 
teresting, but  not  what  he  had  supposed.  He  came  to 
regard  the  Church  as  a  useful  part  of  the  Government 
— divine,  of  course,  as  all  good  things  are  divine — but 
to  become  a  priest  and  play  a  part — he  would  not 
do  it. 

He  was  honest — stubbornly  honest. 
Seven  years  he  had  been  at  Cambridge,  and  now  that 
he  was  just  ready  to  step  into  a  **  living,"  right  in  the 
line  of  a  promotion  that  his  beauty  and  intellect  nat- 
urally suggested,  he  balked. 

It  was  a  great  blow  to  his  parents.  His  mother  plead- 
ed ;  his  father  threatened :  but  they  soon  perceived  that 
this  son  they  had  brought  forth  had  a  will  stronger 
than  theirs.  Their  fond  dreams  of  his  preferment — 
the  handsome  face  of  their  boy  above  an  oaken  pulpit, 
with  thousands  feeding  on  his  words,  the  public  honors, 
and  all  that — faded  away  into  tears  and  misty  nothing- 
ness. But  parenthood  is  doomed  to  disappointment — 
it  does  not  endure  long  enough  to  see  the  end.  Youth 
is  so  headstrong  and  willful :  it  will  not  learn  from  the 
experience  of  others. 

And  all  these  years  of  preparation  and  expense  1  Bet- 
ter he  had  died  and  been  laid  to  rest  with  the  three 
now  in  the  churchyard. 

Before  Milton  had  served  his  seven  years  apprentice- 
ship at  Cambridge,  his  parents  had  moved  to  the  vil- 

X03 


JOHN  lage  of  Horton — twenty  miles  out  of  London,  Wind- 
MILTON  sor-way. 

The  village  of  Horton  has  not  changed  much  with  the 
years,  and  a  tramp  across  the  fields  from  Eton  by  way 
of  Burnham  Beeches  and  Stoke  Pogis,  where  Gray 
wrote  "The  Elegy,"  is  quite  worth  while.  It  is  a  land 
of  lazy  woods,  and  winding  streams  and  hedge-rows 
melodious  with  birds.  One  treads  on  storied  ground, 
and  if  you  wish  you  can  recline  beneath  gnarled  old 
oaks  where  Milton  mused  and  scribbled,  and  wrote  the 
first  drafts  of  "  L'  Allegro"  and  **  II  Penseroso." 
Milton  loitered  here  at  Horton  for  six  years,  and  in  the 
time  produced  just  six  poems. 

He  was  thirty-two  years  of  age,  and  had  never  earned 
a  sixpence.  But  what  booted  it !  His  father's  &  mother's 
home  was  his  :  they  gladly  supplied  his  every  want ; 
and  his  mother  especially  was  ever  his  kindly  critic 
and  most  intimate  friend.  His  days  were  spent  in  study, 
dreams,  lonely  walks  across  green  fields,  and  home- 
comings where,  with  his  mother's  hand  in  his,  he 
would  talk  or  recite  to  her  in  order  to  clarify  the 
thought  that  pressed  upon  him.  Very  calm,  very  peace- 
ful and  very  beautiful  were  those  days.  "  The  pensive 
attitude  of  mind  brings  the  best  result — not  the  active," 
he  used  to  say.  It  was  then  he  wrote  to  his  old  friend, 
Diodati,  "You  ask  what  I  am  about — what  I  am 
thinking  of?  Why,  with  God's  help,  I  am  thinking  of 
immortality.  Forgive  the  word,  it  is  for  your  ear  alone 
— I  am  pluming  my  wings  for  flight." 
X04 


The  good  mother  had  misty,  prophetic  visions  of  what  JOHN 
this  flight  might  be,  and  had  ceased  to  counsel  her  son   MILTON 
against  the  sin  of  idleness.  But  she  did  not  live  to  see 
her  prophecies  find  form,  for  in  this  time  of  peace  and 
love,  when  the  vibrant  air  was  filled  with  hope,  she 
passed  Beyond. 

Long  years  after,  John  Milton  exclaimed,  "  Oh  !  Why 
could  she  not  have  lived  to  know  !  "  And  the  poign- 
ant grief  of  this  son,  then   a   man   in   years 
(with    thirtieth    birthday    well    behind), 
turned  on  the  thought  that  he  had  dis- 
appointed Her — the  mother  who 
had  loved  him  into  being. 


X05 


JOHN  pfSHBJSRSJRI^^'^ON'S  woes  began  with  his 
MILTON    i^^<»7f^«ifllB^W  marriage.      In     his     "  Defensio 

Secunda,"  he  tells,  with  a  touch 
of  pride,  of  the  absolute    inno- 
cency  that   continued   until  his 
thirty-fifth  year.  When  w^e  con- 
sider how  his    combined    inno- 
cence   and    ignorance    plunged 
him     into    a    sudden    marriage 
with   a   bit   of  pink  and  white  protoplasm,  aged  sev- 
enteen, we  cannot  but  regret  that  he  had  not  devoted 
a  little  of  his  valuable  time  to   a  study   of  feminin- 
ity. And  in   some  ■way  vre  think  of  Thackeray,  when 
he  was  being  shown  the  marvelous  works  of  a  cer- 
tain amateur  artist.  •'  Look  at  that !  look  at  that !  " 
cried  the  zealous  guide,  *'  and  he  never  had  a  lesson 
in  art  in  his  life  !  "   Thackeray  adjusted  his  glasses, 
looked    at    the    picture    carefully,  sighed    and    said, 
**  "What  a  pity  he  did  n't  have  just  a  little  good   in- 
struction !  " 

Milton  the  student,  versed  in  abstraction  and  full  of 
learned  lore,  "went  up  the  Thames  seeking  a  little 
needed  rest.  Five  miles  from  Oxford  lived  an  ebb-tide 
aristocratic  family  by  the  name  of  Powell.  Milton  had 
long  known  this  family,  and  it  seems  decided  to  tarry 
with  them  a  day  or  so.  Just  "why  he  sought  their  com- 
pany no  one  ever  knew,  and  Milton  was  too  proud  to 
tell.  The  brown  thrush,  rival  of  the  lark  and  mocking- 
bird, seldom  seeks  the  society  of  the  blue-jay.  But  it 
zo6 


J^'jl'^j'^-' 


'^  'i^'tiasi  ■  €i 


'f 


^iRfe 


mmM 


y 


%-iSi:b 


did  this  time.  The  Powells  were  roaring,  riotous,  roys-  JOHN 
tering,  fox-hunting  Wadsworthi,  on  the  eve  of  bank-  MILTON 
ruptcy,  with  marriageable  daughters. 
The  executive  functions  of  love-making  are  best  carried 
on  byshallo^v  people,  so  mediocre  women  often  show 
rare  skill  in  courtship  and  sometimes  succeed  in  bag- 
ging big  game.  But  surely  Mary  Powell  had  no  con- 
ception of  the  greatness  of  Milton's  intellect — she  only 
knew  that  he  was  handsome,  and  her  parents  said  he 
^vas  rich. 

There  ^vere  feasting  and  mirth  Tvhen  Milton  arrived 
back  in  town  accompanied  by  his  bride  &  various  of  her 
kinsmen.  In  all  marriage  festivals  there  is  something 
pathetically  absurd,  and  I  never  see  a  sidewalk 
awning  spread  without  thinking  of  the  one  erected 
for  John  Milton  and  Mary  Powell,  who  were  led 
through  it  by  an  Erebus  that  was  not  only  blind,  but 
stone  deaf. 

John  Milton  was  an  ascetic,  and  lived  in  a  realm  of 
reverie  and  dreams ;  his  wife  had  a  strong  bias  toward 
the  voluptuous,  reveling  in  a  world  of  sense,  and  de- 
manding attention  as  her  right.  Milton  began  diving 
into  his  theories  and  books,  and  forgot  the  poor  child 
^vho  had  no  abstract  world  into  which  to  withdraw. 
Suddenly  deprived  of  the  gay  companionship  that  her 
father's  house  supplied,  she  felt  herself  aggrieved, 
alone ;  &  tears  of  homesickness  began  to  stream  down 
her  pretty  cheeks. 

When  summoned  into  her  husband's  presence  she  had 

X07 


JOHN  nothing  to  say,  and  Milton,  the  theorist,  discovered 
MILTON  that  what  he  had  mistaken  for  the  natural  reticence 
and  bashfulness  of  maidenhood  was  only  density  and 
lack  of  ideas.  But  the  loneliness  of  the  poor  country 
girl,  shut  up  in  a  student's  den,  is  a  deal  more  touch- 
ing than  the  scholar's  wail  about  *'  the  silent  and  in- 
sensate "  wife.  The  girl  was  being  deprived  of  the  rol- 
licking freedom  to  which  she  had  been  used,  but  the 
great  man  was  w^aking  the  echoes  with  his  wail  for  a 
companionship  he  had  never  known. 
Yet  the  girl  was  shrewd.  All  women  are  shrewd,  I  am 
told,  and  some  are  v/ise  and  some  are  not ;  and  many 
women  there  be  who  consider  finesse  an  improvement 
on  frankness.  At  the  end  of  a  month,  Milton's  wife 
contrived  to  have  her  parents  send  for  her  to  return 
home  on  a  visit  that  was  to  last  only  until  come 
Michaelmas.  But  Michaelmas  arrived  and  the  young 
bride  refused  to  return,  sending  back  saucy  answers  to 
the  great  author  of  **  II  Penseroso." 
In  the  meantime  Milton  wrote  pamphlets  urging  that 
divorce  should  be  granted  on  the  grounds  of  incompati- 
bility ;  and  pronouncing  as  inhuman  the  laws  that  gave 
freedom  from  marital  woes  on  no  less  ignoble  grounds 
than  that  a  man  should  violate  his  honor. 
There  is  pretty  good  evidence  that  a  part  of  Milton's 
argument  on  the  subject  of  divorce  was  written  out 
while  his  wife  was  under  his  roof.  This  reveals  a  little 
lack  of  delicacy  on  part  of  the  author ;  but  it  must  be 
granted  that  Milton  goes  to  the  very  bottom  of  the  sub- 
zo8 


jcct,  even  to  stating  the  fact  that  those  happily  married  JOHN 
have  neither  pity  nor  patience  with  those  mismated.  MILTON 
'*  If  you  want  sympathy,"  he  says,  "you  must  go  to 
those  who  are  regarded  as  not  respectable."  Any  man 
who  writes  on  philosophy  can  find  his  every  cue  in 
Plato,  and  he  who  discusses  divorce  from  a  radical 
standpoint  can  find  himself  anticipated  by  Milton  in 
the  Seventeenth  Century.  Every  view  is  taken,  even 
down  to  the  suggestion  of  a  probationary  marriage, 
which  Milton  thought  might  come  about  when  civil- 
ization had  ceased  to  crawl  and  began  to  walk. 
One  looks  in  vain  for  a  trace  of  the  unhappy  wife  of 
Milton  ever  having  read  her  husband's  tracts.  It  is 
probable  she  never  did  and  would  not  have  compre- 
hended their  import  if  she  had ;  and  it  is  very  sure  that 
she  never  came  to  realize  that  she  was  wedded  to  the 
greatest  living  man  of  the  age.  A  truce  was  patched 
up,  on  the  bankruptcy  of  her  father,  and  she  came  back 
penitent,  and  was  taken  into  favor.  Not  only  did  she 
come  back,  but  she  brought  her  family ;  and  the  raven- 
ous Royalists  consumed  the  substance  of  the  spiritual 
and  ascetic  Puritan. 

Had  Milton  then  died,  it  is  probable  that  the  gladsome 
widow  would  have  been  consolable  and  married  again 
very  shortly,  just  as  did  the  widows  of  Van  Dyck  and 
Rubens,  not  knowing  that  to  have  been  the  wife  of  a 
king  was  honor  enough  for  one  woman. 
But  after  fifteen  years  of  domestic  "neglect,"  during 
which  she  doubtless  benefited  her  husband  by  stirring 

log 


JOHN  in  him  a  noble  discontent,  she  passed  from  earth  ;  and 
MILTON  it  was  left  for  John  Milton  to  repeat  twice  more  his 
marital  venture  with  a  similar  result.  And  in  this, 
Fate  sends  back  a  fact  that  leers  like  Mephis- 
topheles,  in  way  of  answer  to  Milton's 
pamphlets  on  divorce :  Why  should  the 
state  grant  a  divorce,  when  great 
men  refuse  to  learn  by  experi- 
ence and,  given  the  op- 
portunity, only  repeat 
the  blunders  they 
have  already 
made  ? 


»?9 


►D  in  His  goodness  has  in  cer-  JOHN 
tain  instances  sent  great  men  MILTON 
angels  of  light  for  assistants — 
mates  -who  could  comprehend 
&  sympathize  with  their  ideals. 
But  it  is  expecting  too  much  to 
suppose  that  Nature  can  look 
out  for  such  a  trifle  as  that  the 
right  man  should  marry  the  right 
woman.  Nature  possibly  never  considered  a  time 
contract,  and  she  is  a  careless  jade,  anyway.  She 
moves  blindly  along  with  never  a  thought  for  the 
individual. 

Audubon,  the  naturalist,  records  that  one-third  of  all 
birds  hatched  tumble  out  of  the  nest  before  they  can 
fly,  and  once  on  the  ground  the  parent  birds  are  un- 
able either  to  warm,  feed  or  protect  them. 
Read  the  lives  of  the  Great  Men  who  have  lived  dur- 
ing the  past  three  thousand  years,  and  listen  closely 
and  you  will  hear  the  wild  wail  of  neglected  p.nd  un- 
appreciated wives.  A  woman  can  forgive  a  beating, 
but  to  be  forgotten — never.  She  hates,  by  instinct,  an 
austere  and  self-contained  character.  Dignity  &  pride 
repel  her;  preoccupation  keeps  her  aloof;  concentra- 
tion on  an  idea  is  unforgivable. 

The  wife  of  Tolstoy  asking  to  have  her  husband  ad- 
judged insane  is  not  a  rare  instance  in  the  lives  of 
thinkers.  To  think  thoughts  that  are  different  from  the 
thoughts  one's  neighbors  think  is  surely  good  reason 

III 


JOHN  why  the  man  should  be  looked  after.  Recently  we 
MILTON  have  had  evidence  that  the  wife  of  Victor  Hugo  re- 
garded the  author  of  ••  Les  Miserables  "  with  suspi- 
cion, and  at  one  time  actually  made  preparations  to  let 
him  enjoy  his  exile  alone — she  would  back  to  Paris 
and  enjoy  life  as  every  one  should.  At  Guernsey  there 
was  no  society ! 

When  Isaac  Newton  called  upon  his  lady-love  and  in 
a  fit  of  abstraction,  looking  about  for  a  utensil  to  push 
the  tobacco  down  in  his  pipe,  chanced  upon  the  lady's 
little  finger,  the  law  of  gravitation  stood  no  show  and 
Newton  and  his  pipe  were  sent  like  nebulae,  whirling 
into  space. 

When  the  Great  Inventor,  absorbed  in  a  problem  as  to 
Electricity  (that  thing  which  to  us  is  only  a  name  and 
of  which  we  know  nothing),  forgets  home,  wife,  child, 
supper;  and  midnight  finds  him  in  his  laboratory, 
■where  he  has  been  since  sunrise — ^just  imagine,  if  you 
please,  the  shrill  greeting  that  is  in  cold  storage  for 
him  when  he  stumbles  home,  haggard  and  worn,  at 
dawn.  How  can  he  explain  why  he  did  this  thing  and 
answer  the  questions  as  to  who  was  there,  &  ^vhat 
good  it  all  did  anyway ! 

Thought  is  a  torture,  and  requires  such  a  concentra- 
tion of  energy  that  there  is  nothing  left  for  the  soft 
courtesies.  The  day  is  fleeting,  and  the  night  cometh 
when  no  man  can  work.  The  hot  impulse  to  grasp  and 
materialize  the  dream  ere  it  fades  is  strong  upon  the 
man. 

112 


Of  course  he  is  selfish — he  sacrifices  everything,  as  JOHN 
Palissy  did  when  fuel  was  short  and  the  clay  just  at  MILTON 
the  turning  point.  Yes,  the  artist  is  selfish :  he  sacri- 
fices his  wife  and  society,  and  himself,  too,  to  get  the 
work  done.  Four-o'clocks,  mealtime,  bedtime,  and  all 
the  household  system  as  to  pink  teas,  calls  and  eti- 
quette, stand  for  naught.  And  down  the  corridors  of 
Time  comes  to  us  the  shrill  wail  of  neglected  wives, 
and  the  crash  of  broken  hearts  echoes  like  the  sound 
of  a  painter  falling  through  a  skylight.  All  this  is  the 
price  of  achievement. 

fAKING  a  little  look  backward 
into  Milton's  life  we  find  that 
until  his  thirty-third  year  he  had 
not  tasted  of  practical  life  at 
all.  About  that  time  his  father 
in  a  sort  of  desperation  packed 
him  off  for  the  Continent,  in 
charge  of  a  trusty  attendant, 
who  acted  in  the  dual  capacity 
of  servant  and  friend.  The  letters  he  carried  to  in- 
fluential men  in  Paris,  Florence,  Venice  and  Rome 
secured  him  the  Speaker's  eye,  and  his  beauty  and 
learning  did  the  rest.  His  march  was  that  of  a  con- 
quering hero.  In  Paris  he  surprised  the  savants  by 
addressing  them  in  their  own  tongue,  and  reciting 
from  their  chief  writers.  This  was  repeated  in  Italy ; 
and  at  Florence,  as  a  sort  of  half-challenge  for  per- 
mission to  occupy  the  highest  seats,  he  was  invited 

113 


JOHN  to  read  from  his  own  compositions,  and  this  he  did 
MILTON  with  such  grace  and  power  that  thereafter  all  doors 
flew  open  at  his  touch. 

Returning  to  England  after  an  absence  of  fifteen 
months,  he  found  his  father's  household  broken  up, 
and  through  bad  investments  the  family  fortune  sadly 
depleted.  But  travel  added  cubits  to  his  stature :  the 
mixing  with  men  had  put  him  into  possession  of  his 
own,  and  he  now  felt  well  able  to  cope  with  the  world. 
He  secured  modest  lodgings  in  St.  Bride's  Church- 
yard, and  set  to  work  to  make  a  living  and  a  name  by 
authorship.  His  head  teemed  with  themes  for  poems, 
but  cash  advances  were  not  forthcoming  from  pub- 
lishers, and,  to  bridge  over,  he  tried  tutoring. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  ••  Paradise  Lost  "  was  con- 
ceived, and  rough  jottings  were  made  as  to  divisions 
and  heads,  and  a  few  stanzas  were  written  of  the  im- 
mortal poem  that  was  not  to  be  completed  for  a  score 
of  years. 

The  first  volume  of  Milton's  poems  was  issued  in  1645, 
when  he  was  thirty-seven  years  of  age.  But  before 
this  there  were  pamphlets  put  forth  that  made  polit- 
ical London  reel.  The  author  was  at  once  seen  to  be  a 
man  of  remarkable  learning  and  marvelous  intellect, 
and  the  work  secured  Milton  a  few  friends  and  divers 
enemies. 

From  a  man  of  leisure  Milton  had  suddenly  become  a 
worker,  whose  every  daylight  hour  was  crammed  with 
duties.  His  skill  as  a  teacher  brought  him  all  the  pu- 
X14 


pils  he  cared  for,  and  he  moved  into  better  quarters  in  JOHN 
Aldersgate.  He  was  immersed  in  his  work,  was  making   MILTON 
valuable  acquaintances  among  literary  people,  was  re- 
vered by  his  pupils,  and  the   happiness   was   his   of 
knowing  that   he  was   influential   and    independent. 
A   fine    intoxication    comes    to    every  brain-worker 
when  the  world  acknowledges  with    tangible  remit- 
tances that  the  product  of  his  mind  has  a  value  on 
the  Rialto.  Such  was  Milton's  joy  in  1643. 
"The   L'Allegro,"    "  II  Penseroso,"    "Comus"    and 
"  Lycidas  "  had  established  his  place  as  a  poet ;  &  the 
power  of  his  pen  had  been  proven  in  sundry  religious 
and  political  controversies. 

In  his  household  were  two   sons  of  his   sister  and 

several  other  pupils  who  had  sought  his  tutorship. 

He  was  contented  in  his  work,  pleased  and 

happy  with  the  young  friends  who  sat  at 

his  board,  and  in  the  hour  or  two 

snatched  each  day  from  toil, 

for  music  and  reverie. 


115 


JOHN    |#gPggBMpjjjH|  EIZE  upon  the  moments  as  they 
MILTON    llfJ^P^«!^^2?SG  fly,  O  John  Milton,  &  hug  them 

to  thy  heart !  Those  were  days 

of  gold  when  your  mother  was 

your  patient  listener  and  friend. 

Her  love  enveloped  you   as  an 

aura,  and  her  voice,   soft    and 

low,  upheld  you  when  courage 

faltered.    But     these,    too,    are 

glorious   days — days   full    of  work   and    health,    and 

hope,   and  high  endeavor.  But  these   days   of  peace 

and  freedom  are  the  last  you  shall  ever  know.  Even 

now  they  flee  as  a  shadow  and  fade  into  mist !  Gross 

stupidity,  silent  and  insensate,  sits  waiting   for  you 

at  the  door;   calumny  is  near;  taunting  hate  comes 

riding  fast  1 

The  sympathy  for  which  you  yearn  shall  be  yours 
only  in  dreams,  and  you  shall  be  cheated  of  all  the 
tenderness  for  which  your  heart  craves.  The  love  and 
gentleness  ^vhich  you  associate  with  your  mother,  you 
ascribe  in  innocence  and  ignorance  to  all  women ;  but 
Fate  shall  undeceive  you,  O  John  Milton,  and  make 
mock  of  all  your  high  ideals.  You  dote  on  liberty,  but 
liberty  is  not  for  you.  You  shall  see  the  funeral  of  the 
Republic ;  the  defamation  of  your  honor ;  the  proscrip- 
tion of  all  the  sacred  things  you  prize.  Your  compan- 
ions shall  not  be  of  your  own  choosing,  but  shall  be 
those  who  neither  know  nor  value  the  sweet,  subtle 
mintage  of  the  mind.  Around  you  mad  riot  shall  surge, 
tl6 


a  distaste  for  liberty  shall  prevail — an  enthusiasm  for  JOHN 
slavery.  The  glorious  leaders  of  your  Puritan  faith  MILTON 
shall  be  condemned  and  executed,  hanged,  cut  down 
from  the  gallows  alive,  and  quartered  amid  the  hoarse 
insults  of  the  people  they  sought  to  serve ;  and  you, 
yourself,  shall  be  hunted  like  a  wild  beast.  You  shall 
see  the  prisons  filled  to  overflowing  with  men  and 
women  whose  only  crime  was  a  love  of  truth.  And  a 
libertine  shall  sit  on  the  throne  of  the  England  that 
you  love.  These  things  you  shall  see  with  those  mild, 
dark  eyes,  and  then  night,  eternal  night,  shall  settle 
down  upon  you,  and  for  those  idle  orbs  no  day  shall 
dawn,  nor  starry  night  appear,  nor  face  of  man  nor 
child  shall  be  reflected  there.  Your  sightlessness  shall 
give  those  who  owe  you  gratitude  and  love  oppor- 
tunity to  filch  your  gold,  and  finally  Are  shall  rob  you 
of  your  books,  and  well-nigh  all  your  treasures. 
Your  daughters  shall  neither  esteem  nor  respect  you, 
and  the  lines  you  dictate  shall  be  to  them  but  the  idle 
vaporings  of  a  mind  diseased.  Your  acute  ears  shall 
hear  these  daughters  express  the  wish  that  you  were 
dead ;  and  then  in  your  blindness  you  will  give  your- 
self into  the  keeping  of  a  woman  as  dull,  dense  and 
unfeeling  as  the  foolish  child  you  first  chose  as  wife. 
But  with  it  all  your  obstinacy  shall  constitute  your 
power ;  and  that  beauty  which  was  yours  in  youth  shall 
be  with  you  to  the  last.  You  shall  feel  all  the  torments 
of  the  damned  and  become  familiar  with  the  scorch- 
ing flames  of  hell,  but  as  recompense  the  splendors 

"7 


JOHN  of  the  Celestial  Kingdom  shall  open  upon  your  inward 
MILTON  vision,  and  your  soul  shall  behold  that  which  the  eyes 
of  earth  have  lost.  Something  great  and   proud 
shall  go  out  from  your  presence  to  all  the  dis- 
cerning ones  who   shall  approach  you, 
and  your  end  shall  be  like  the  set- 
ting of  the  sun,  bright,  calm, 
poised  and  resplendent. 


xx8 


Samuel    Johnson. 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON 


LETTER  TO  CHESTERFIELD. 

•  •  •  Seven  years,  my  Lord,  have  now  passed,  since  I  waited  in 
your  outward  rooms  and  was  repulsed  from  your  door ;  during  which 
time  I  have  been  pushing  on  my  work  through  difficulties  of  which  it 
is  useless  to  complain,  &  have  brought  it  at  last  to  the  verge  of  pub- 
lication without  one  act  of  assistance,  one  word  of  encouragement, 
or  one  smile  of  favour.  Such  treatment  I  did  not  expect,  for  I  never 
had  a  patron  before. 

The  shepherd  in  Virgil  grew  at  last  acquainted  with  Love,  and  found 
him  a  native  of  the  rocks. 

Is  not  a  patron,  my  Lord,  one  who  looks  with  unconcern  on  a  man 
struggling  for  life  in  the  water,  and  when  he  has  reached  the  ground 
encumbers  him  with  help  ?  The  notice  which  you  have  been  pleased 
to  take  of  my  labours,  had  it  been  early,  had  been  kind ;  but  it  has 
been  delayed  till  I  am  indifferent,  and  cannot  enjoy  it ;  till  I  am  a  sol- 
itary, and  cannot  impart  it ;  till  I  am  known,  and  do  not  want  it.  I  hope 
it  is  no  very  cynical  asperity  not  to  confess  obligations  where  no 
benefit  has  been  received,  or  to  be  unwilling  that  the  public  should 
consider  me  as  owing  that  to  a  patron  which  Providence  has  enabled 
me  to  do  for  myself. 

Having  carried  on  my  work  thus  far  with  so  little  obligation  to  any 
favourer  of  learning,  I  shall  not  be  disappointed  though  I  should  con- 
clude it,  should  less  be  possible,  with  less ;  for  I  have  been  long  wak- 
ened from  that  dream  of  hope  in  which  I  once  boasted  myself  with  so 
much  exultation,  my  Lord, 

Your  Lordship's  most  humble,  most  obedient  servant, 

Sam  Johnson. 


HE  critics,  I  believe,  have  made  a    SAMUEL 
distinction  between  large  men  and  JOHNSON 
[great  men. 

Samuel  Johnson  >vas  both. 
He  was  massive  in  intellect,  colossal 
in  memory,  weighed  nigh  three  hun- 
dred pounds,  and  had  prejudices  to 
match.  He  was  possessed  of  a  giant's 
strength,  and  occasionally  used  it  like 
a  giant — for  instance,  when  he  felled 
an  officious  bookseller  with  a  folio. 
Johnson  was  most  unfortunate  in  his 
biographer.  In  picturing  the  great 
writer,  Boswell  writes  more  enter- 
tainingly than  Johnson  ever  did,  and 
I  thereby  overtops  his  subject.  And 
when  in  reply  to  the  intimation  that 
Boswell  was  going  to  write  his  life, 
I  Johnson  answered,  "If  I  really 
thought  he  was,  I  would  take  his," 
he  spoke  a  jest  in  earnest. 
Walking  along  Market  Street  in  the 
city  of  St.  Louis,  with  a  friend,  not 
long  ago,  my  comrade  suddenly 
stopped  and  excitedly  pointed  out  a 
man  across  the  way — «*  Look  quick — 
[there  he  goes  !  "  exclaimed  my  friend, 
that  man  with  the  derby  and  duster 
-see  ?  That 's  the  husband  of  Mrs. 


119 


SAMUEL   Lease  of  Kansas ! "  And  all  I  could  say  was,  "  God 
JOHNSON    help  him!" 

Not  but  that  Mrs.  Lease  is  a  most  excellent  and  ami- 
able lady,  but  the  idea  of  a  man,  made  in  the  image 
of  his  Maker,  being  reduced  to  the  social  state  of  a 
drone  bee  is  most  depressing. 

Among  that  worthy  class  of  people  referred  to  some- 
what ironically  as  "the  reading  public,"  Boswell  is 
read,  but  Johnson  never.  And  so  sternly  true  is  the 
fact,  that  many  critics,  set  on  a  hair-trigger,  aver  that 
were  it  not  for  Boswell  no  one  would  now  know  that 
a  writer  by  the  name  of  Johnson  ever  lived.  But  the 
fact  is,  Boswell  ruined  the  literary  reputation  of  John- 
son, by  intimating  that  Johnson  wrote  Johnsonese,  but 
that  is  a  mistake. 

Johnson  never  wrote  Johnsonese.  The  piling  up  of 
reasons,  the  cumulation  of  argument — setting  off  epi- 
gram against  epigram,  that  mark  Johnson's  literary 
style  are  its  distinguishing  features.  He  is  profound, 
but  always  lucid.  And  lucidity  is  just  what  modern 
Johnsonese  lacks.  The  \s^ord  was  coined  by  a  man  who 
had  neither  the  patience  to  read  Johnson  nor  the  abil- 
ity to  comprehend  him.  Only  sophomores,  and  private 
secretaries  who  write  the  speeches  for  Congressmen, 
write  Johnsonese. 

Quibblers  possibly  may  arise  and  present  Johnson's 
definition  of  network — **  anything  reticulated  or  de- 
cussated at  equal  distances  -with  interstices  between 
the  intersections,"  but  with  the  quibbler  we  have  no 

X20 


time  to  dally.  Some  people  insist  on  having  their  lit-    SAMUEL 
erature  illustrated,  just  as  others  refuse  to  attend  lee-    JOHNSON 
tures  that  are  not  reinforced  by  a  stereopticon. 
Johnson  had  a  style  that  is  stately,  dignified,  splendid. 
It  moves  from  point  to  point  with  absolute  precision, 
and  in  it  there  is  seldom  anything  ambiguous,  muddy, 
misty  or  uncertain.  Get  down  a  volume  of  *•  Lives  of 
the  Poets,"  and  prove  my  point  for  yourself,  by  open- 
ing at  any  page.  It  was  Boswell  who  set  his  own  light, 
chatty  &  amusing  gossip  over  against  the  wise,  stately 
diction   of  Johnson,  and   allowed   Goldsmith  to   say, 
"Your  little  fishes  talk  like  whales — "  and  the  mud 
ball  has  stuck.  The  average  man  is  much  more  w^illing 
to  take  the  wily  Boswell's  word  for  it,  than  to  read 
Johnson  for  himself. 

The  precision  of  Johnson's  English  cannot  fail  to  de- 
light the  student  of  letters  who  cares  to  interest  him- 
self in  the  subject  of  sentence-building.  Johnson 
handles  a  thought  with  such  ease  !  He  makes  you  think 
of  the  circus  **  strong  man"  who  tosses  the  cannon 
balls,  marked  «*  weight  250  lbs."  What  if  the  balls  are 
sometimes  only  wood  painted  black !  Have  we  not 
been  entertained  ?  Read  this  random  paragraph: 
"  Criticism  is  a  study  by  which  men  grow  important 
and  formidable  at  very  small  expense.  The  power  of 
invention  has  been  conferred  by  nature  upon  few,  and 
the  labor  of  learning  those  sciences  which  may  by  con- 
tinuous effort  be  obtained  is  too  great  to  be  willingly 
endured ;  but  every  man  can  exert  such  judgment  as  he 

I2X 


SAMUEL  has  upon  the  works  of  others;  and  he  whom  nature 
JOHNSON  has  made  weak,  and  idleness  keeps  ignorant,  may  yet 
support  his  vanity  by  the  name  of  *  critic '." 
But  the  greatest  literary  light  of  his  day  has  been 
thrown  into  the  shadow  by  a  man  whom  no  one  sus- 
pected of  being  able  to  write  entertainingly.  In  the 
world  of  letters,  the  great  Cham  exists  only  as  a  lesser 
luminary;  just  as  the  once  noted  novelist,  George 
Henry  Lewes,  is  now  known  as  the  husband  of  George 
Eliot. 

And  yet  no  one  is  so  rash  as  to  say  that  the  name  of 
Boswell  would  now  be  known  were  it  not  for  Johnson. 
And  conversely  (or  otherwise)  if  it  were  the  proper 
place,  I  would  show  that  were  it  not  for  George  Henry 
Lewes  we  would  never  have  had  "Adam  Bede,"  or 
V  The  Mill  on  the  Floss."  . 

Boswell  wrote  the  best  ••  Life  "  ever  written.  Nothing 
like  it  was  ever  written  before ;  nothing  to  equal  it  has 
been  written  since.  It  has  had  hundreds  of  imitators, 
but  no  competitors.  Matthew  Arnold  said  that  no  man 
ever  had  so  good  a  subject,  but  Arnold  for  the  moment 
seemed  to  forget  that  Hawkins,  a  professional  literary 
man,  published  his  "Life  of  Johnson"  long  before 
Bos  well's  was  sent  to  the  printer — and  who  reads 
Hawkins  ? 

Surely  Boswell  had  a  great  subject,  and  he  rises  to  the 
level  of  events  and  makes  the  most  of  it.  At  times  I 
have  wondered  if  Boswell  were  not  really  a  genius  so 
great  and  profound  that  he  was  willing  to  play  the  fool, 

122 


as  Edgar  in  "  Lear"  plays  the  maniac,  and  allow  him-  SAMUEL 
self  to  be  snubbed  (in  print)  in  order  to  make  his  tell-  JOHNSON 
ing  point !  Millionaires  can  well  afford  to  wear  ragged 
coats.  Second  rate  man  Boswell  may  have  been,  as  he 
himself  so  oft  admits,  yet  as  a  biographer  he  stands 
first  in  the  front  rank.  But  suppose  his  extreme  ignor- 
ance was  only  the  domino  disguising  a  cleverness  so 
subtle  that  it  was  not  discovered  until  after  his  death  I 
And  what  if  he  smiles  now,  as  from  out  of  Elysium  he 
looks  and  beholds  how,  as  a  writer,  he  eclipsed  old 
Ursa  Major,  and  thus  clipped  the  claws  that  were  ready 
for  any  chance  Scot  that  might  pass  that  way  ! 
Mr.  John  Hay  has  suggested  that  possibly  the  insight, 
piquancy  and  calm  wisdom  of  Omar  Khayyam  are  two- 
thirds  essence  of  FitzGerald.  If  so  the  joke  is  on  Omar, 
not  FitzGerald. 

A  dozen  of  Johnson's  contemporaries  wrote  about 
him,  and  all  make  him  out  a  profound  scholar,  a  deep 
philosopher,  a  facile  writer.  Boswell  by  his  innocent 
quoting  and  recounting  makes  his  conversation  outstrip 
all  of  his  other  accomplishments.  He  reveals  the  man 
by  the  most  skillful  indirection,  and  by  leaving  his 
guard  down,  often  allows  the  reader  to  score  a  point. 
And  of  all  devices  of  writing  folk,  none  is  finer  than 
to  please  the  reader  by  allowing  him  to  pat  himself  on 
the  back. 

If  a  writer  is  too  clever  he  repels.  Shakespeare  avoids 
the  difficulty,  and  proves  himself  the  master  by  keep- 
ing out  of  sight;   Renan  wins  by  a  great  show  of 

123 


SAMUEL   modesty  &  deferential  fairness ;  Boswell   assumes  an 
JOHNSON    innocence  and  ignorance  that  were  really  not  parts  of 
his  nature.  Every  man  who  reads  Boswell  considers 
himself  the  superior  of  Boswell,  and  therefore  is  per- 
fectly at  home.  It  is  not  pleasant  to  be  in  the  society 
of  those  who  are  much  your  superiors.  Any  man  who 
sits  in  the  company  of  Samuel  Pepys  for  a  half  hour 
feels  a  sort  of  a  half    patronizing  pity   for  him   and 
therefore  is  happy,  for  to  patronize  is  bliss. 
If  Boswell  has  reinforced  fact  with  fiction,  and  given 
us  art  for  truth,  then  his  character  of  Samuel  Johnson 
is  the  most  vividly  conceived  and  deeply  etched  in  all 
the  realm  of  books.  But  if  he  gives  merely  the  simple 
facts,  then  Boswell  is  no  less  a  genius,  for  he  has 
omitted  the  irrelevant  &  inconsequential,  and 
by  playing  o£F  the  excellent  against  the  ab- 
surd, he  has  placed  his  subject  among 
the  few  great  wits  who  have  ever 
lived —  a  man  who  ^vrote  re- 
markably well,  but  talked 
infinitely    better. 


X24 


pNTAIGNE  advises  young  men 
that  if  they  will  fall  in  love, 
why,  to  fall  in  love  with  women 
older  than  themselves.  His  ar- 
gument is  that  a  young  and 
pretty  woman  makes  such  a 
demand  on  a  man's  time  and  at- 
tention that  she  is  sure,  event- 
ually, to  wear  love  to  the  warp. 
So  the  wise  old  Frenchman  suggests  that  it  is  the 
part  of  wisdom  to  give  your  affection  to  one  who 
is  both  plain  and  elderly — one  who  is  not  suffering 
from  a  surfeit  of  love,  and  one  whose  head  has  not 
been  turned  by  flattery.  "  Young  women,"  says 
the  philosopher,  **  demand  attention  as  their  right  and 
often  flout  the  giver,  whereas  old  women  are  very 
grateful." 

Whether  Samuel  Johnson,  of  Lichfield,  ever  read  Mon- 
taigne or  not  is  a  question,  but  this  we  know,  that  when 
he  was  twenty-six  he  married  the  Widow  Porter,  aged 
forty-nine. 

Assuming  that  Johnson  had  read  Montaigne  and  was 
mindful  of  his  advice,  there  ^vere  other  excellent  rea- 
sons why  he  did  not  link  his  fortunes  with  those  of  a 
young  and  pretty  woman. 

Johnson  in  his  youth,  as  well  as  throughout  life,  was 
a  Grind  of  the  pure  type.  The  Grind  is  a  fixture,  a  few 
being  found  at  every  University,  even  unto  this  day. 
The  present  writer,  once  in  a  book  of  fiction,  founded 

125 


SAMUEL 
JOHNSON 


SAMUEL  on  fact,  took  occasion  to  refer  to  the  genus  Grind,  with 
JOHNSON  Samuel  Johnson  in  mind,  as  follows:  He  is  poor  in 
purse,  but  great  in  frontal  development. 
He  goes  to  school  because  he  wishes  to,  (no  one  ever 
*<sent"  a  Grind  to  college).  He  has  a  sallow  skin,  a 
watery  eye,  a  shambling  gait,  but  he  has  the  facts. 
His  clothes  are  outgrown,  his  coat  shiny,  his  linen  a 
dull  ecru,  his  hands  clammy.  He  reads  a  book  as  he 
walks,  and  when  he  bumps  into  you  he  always  excul- 
pates himself  in  Attic  Greek. 

This  absent-mindedness  and  habit  of  reading  on  the 
street,  affords  the  Sport  (another  college  type) 
great  opportunity  for  the  playing  of  pranks.  It  is  very 
funny  to  walk  along  in  front  of  a  Grind  who  is  reading 
as  he  walks,  and  then  suddenly  stop  and  stoop,  and 
let  the  Grind  fall  over  you  ;  for  the  innocent  Grind, 
thinking  he  has  been  in  fault,  is  ever  profuse  in  apol- 
ogies. 

Many  years  ago  there  was  a  Grind.  A  party  of  Sports 
saw  him  approaching,  deeply  immersed  in  his  book. 
"Look  you,"  quoth  the  chief  of  the  Sports — "look 
you  and  observe  him  fall  over  me." 
And  they  looked. 
Onward  blindly  trudged  the  Grind,  reading  as  he  came. 

The  Sport  stepped  ahead  of  him,  stooped,  and 

one  big  foot  of  the  Grind  shot  out  and  kicked  him  into 
the  gutter.  Then  the  Grind  continued  his  walk  and  his 
reading  without  saying  a  word. 
This  incident  is  here  recorded  for  the  betterment  of 

X2€ 


the  Young,  to  show  them  that  things  are  not  always    SAMUEL 
what  they  seem.  JOHNSON 

Samuel  Johnson,  I  have  said,  was  a  Grind  of  the  pure 
type.  He  was  so  near-sighted  that  he  fell  over  chairs 
in  drawing  rooms,  and  so  awkward  that  his  long  arms 
occasionally  brushed  the  bric-a-brac  from  mantels.  No 
lady's  train  was  safe  if  he  were  in  the  room.  At  gath- 
erings of  young  people  if  Johnson  appeared,  his  pres- 
ence was  at  once  the  signal  for  mirth,  of  which  he  was, 
of  course,  the  unconscious  object. 
Johnson's  face  was  scarred  by  the  King's  Evil,  that 
even  the  touch  of  Queen  Anne  had  failed  to  cure.  While 
a  youth  he  talked  aloud  to  himself,  a  privilege  that 
should  be  granted  only  to  those  advanced  in  years.  He 
would  grunt  out  prayers  and  expletives  at  uncertain 
times,  keep  up  a  clucking  sound  with  his  tongue,  sway 
his  big  body  from  side  to  side,  and  drum  a  tattoo  upon 
his  knee.  Now  and  again  would  come  a  suppressed 
whistle,  and  then  a  low  humming  sound,  backed  up  by 
a  vacant  non  compos  mentis  smile. 
This  most  strange  young  man  was  a  boarder  in  the 
home  of  Mrs.  Porter,  when  her  husband  was  alive, 
and  the  husband  and  boarder  had  been  fast  friends — 
drawn  together  by  a  bookish  bias. 
Very  naturally  when  the  husband  passed  away,  the 
boarder  sought  to  console  the  bereaved  landlady,  and 
the  result  was  as  usual.  And  when,  long  years  after, 
Johnson  would  solemnly  explain  that  it  was  a  pure 
love-match  on  both  sides,  the  statement  never  failed  to 

Z27 


SAMUEL   excite  much  needless  and  ill-suppressed  merriment  on 
JOHNSON    the  part  of  the  listeners. 

Unlike  most  literary  men  Johnson  was  domestic,  and 
his  marriage  was  one  of  the  most  happy  events  of  his 
career.  But  to  show  that  the  philosophy  of  Montaigne 
is  not  infallible,  and  that  all  signs  fail  in  dry  weather, 
it  might  be  stated  that  the  bride  proved  by  her  conduct 
on  her  wedding  day  that  she  had  some  relish  of  the 
saltness  of  time  in  her  cosmos,  despite  her  fifty  sum- 
mers and  as  many  hard  winters. 

Said  Johnson  to  Boswell,  referring  to  the  horseback 
ride  home  after  the  wedding  ceremony :  "  Sir,  she  had 
read  the  old  romances,  and  had  got  into  her  head  the 
fantastical  notion  that  a  woman  of  spirit  should  use 
her  lover  like  a  dog.  So,  sir,  at  first  she  told  me  that  I 
rode  too  fast,  and  she  could  not  keep  up  with  me ;  and 
when  I  rode  a  little  slower,  she  passed  me,  and  com- 
plained that  I  lagged  behind.  I  was  not  to  be  made  the 
slave  of  caprice ;  &  I  resolved  to  begin  as  I  meant 
to  end.  I  therefore  pushed  on  briskly,  till  I  was 
fairly  out  of  sight.  The  road  lay  between 
two  hedges,  so  I  was  sure  she  could 
not  miss  it ;  &  I  contrived  that  she 
should  soon  come  up  with  me. 
When  she  did  I  observed 
her  to  be  in  tears." 


X28 


SHORTLY  after  his  marriage, 
Johnson  opened  a  private  school 
for  boys.  To  operate  a  private 
school  successfully  implies  a 
certain  amount  of  skill  in  the 
management  of  parents ;  but 
Johnson's  uncouth  manners  and 
needlessly  blunt  speech  were  ap- 
palling to  those  who  had  chil- 
dren who  might  possibly  be  given  to  imitation. 
Only  three  pupils  were  secured,  and  but  one  of  these 
received  any  benefit  from  the  tutor ;  and  this  benefit 
came,  according  to  the  scholar,  from  the  master's  sup- 
plying an  excellent  object  for  ridicule. 
This  pupil's  name  was  David  Garrick. 
The  meeting  with  David  Garrick  was  a  pivotal  point 
in  the  life  of  Johnson.  Johnson's  mental  and  spiritual 
existence  flowed  on,  separate  and  apart,  from  that  of 
his  wife.  There  was  no  meeting  of  the  waters.  His  af- 
fection for  her  was  most  tender  and  constant,  but  in 
quality  it  seemed  to  differ  but  slightly  from  the  senti- 
ment he  entertained  toward  "  Hodge,"  his  cat. 
Hodge  was  fed  on  oysters  that  his  owner  could  ill  af- 
ford ;  and  after  Johnson  had  spent  the  little  fortune 
that  belonged  to  his  wife,  the  lady  was  regaled  on  the 
best  and  choicest  that  his  income,  or  credit,  could 
secure^  But  if  one  of  those  lightning  flashes  of  wit 
ever  escaped  him  in  her  direction  we  do  not  know  it. 
Garrick  evidently  was  the  first  flint  that  tried  his  steel. 

129 


SAMUEL 
JOHNSON 


SAMUEL  The  distinctions  of  teacher  and  scholar  were  soon  lost 
JOHNSON  between  these  two,  and  the  lessons  took  the  turn  of  a 
fusillade  of  wit.  They  made  comments  on  the  authors 
they  read,  and  comments  on  the  people  they  met,  and 
criticised  each  other  with  cantharides  remarks  that 
tested  friendship  to  its  extremest  limit.  And  this  con- 
tinual skirmish  that  would  have  made  sworn  foes  of 
common  men  in  a  day  revealed  to  each  that  the  other 
had  the  element  of  unexpectedness  in  his  nature  and 
was  worth  loving. 

Humor  and  melancholy  go  hand  in  hand ;  both  are  born 
of  an  extreme  sensitiveness,  and  the  man  who  smiles 
at  the  trivial  misfits  of  life  realizes  also  that  all  men 
who  tread  the  earth  are  living  under  a  sentence  of 
death,  and  that  Fate  has  merely  allowed  them  an  in- 
definite, but  limited  reprieve. 

At  the  outset  of  Johnson's  career,  one  cannot  but  see 
that  the  companionship  and  nimble  wit  of  Garrick 
saved  his  ponderous  and  melancholy  mind  from  going 
into  bankruptcy. 

And  now  we  find  them,  one  twenty-eight,  big,  near- 
sighted, theoretical,  blundering  ;  and  the  other  twenty- 
one,  slight,  active,  graceful,  practical.  They  were  alike 
in  this :  they  both  loved  books  and  were  possessed  of 
the  eager,  earnest,  receptive  mind.  To  possess  the 
hospitable  mind !  For  what  greater  blessing  can  one 
pray  ! 

And  then  they  were  alike  in  other  respects — they  were 
desperately  poor ;  neither  had  an  income  ;  neither  had 
Z30 


a  profession;  both  were  ambitious.  Johnson  had  writ- 
ten a  tragedy — "Irene" — and  he  had  read  it  to  Gar- 
rick  several  times,  and  Garrick  said  it  was  good  and 
should  make  a  hit.  But  Garrick  did  n't  know  much 
about  tragedies — law  was  his  bent — he  had  read  law 
for  two  years,  off  and  on.  They  would  go  to  London 
and  seize  fortune  by  the  scalp-lock.  In  London  good 
lawyers  were  needed,  and  London  was  the  only  place 
for  a  playwright. 

They  scraped  together  their  pennies,  borrowed  a  few 
more,  got  a  single  letter  of  introduction  between  them 
to  some  person  of  unknown  influence  and  started  away, 
with  the  lachrymose  blessings  of  the  elderly  bride,  and 
Davy's  mother. 

They  must  have  been  a  queer  sight  when  the  stage  let 
them  down  at  the  Strand — dusty,  dirty,  tired  and 
scared  by  the  babel  of  sounds  &  sights  I  And  no  doubt 
Johnson's  enormous  size  saved  them  from  sundry  in- 
sults and  divers  taunts  that  otherwise  might  have 
come  their  way. 

Those  first  few  weeks  in  London  were  given  to  staring 
into  shop  windows  and  wandering,  open-mouthed,  up 
and  down.  No  one  wanted  the  tragedy — the  managers 
all  sniffed  at  it.  Little  then  did  Davy  dream,  as  they 
made  their  way  from  the  office  of  one  theatre  manager 
to  that  of  another,  that  he  himself  would  some  day 
own  a  theatre  and  give  the  discarded  play  its  first  set- 
ting. And  little  did  he  think  that  he  would  yet  be  the 
foremost  actor  of  his  time,  and  his  awkward  mate  the 

131 


SAMUEL 
JOHNSON 


SAMUEL  literary  dictator  of  London.  Oh  !  this  game  of  life  is  a 
JOHNSON  great  play  !  The  blissful  uncertainty  of  it  all !  The  am- 
bitions, plans,  strivings,  heartaches,  mad  desires  and 
vain  reachings  out  of  empty  arms !  The  tears,  the  bit- 
ter disappointments,  the  sleepless  nights,  the  echoes 
of  prayers  unheard,  and  the  hollow  hopelessness  of 
love  turned  to  hate  ! 

And  then  mayhap  we  do  as  Emerson  did,  go  out  into 
the  woods,  and  all  the  trees  say,  '<  Why  so  hot,  my 
little  man." 

Garrick,  disappointed  and  undone  at  the  thought  of  de- 
feat in  his  chosen  profession,  turned  to  commercial 
life,  &  then  to  the  theatre.  At  his  first  stage  appearance 
he  trembled  with  diffidence  and  all  but  fled  in  fright. 
He  persevered,  for  he  could  do  nothing  else.  He  arose 
step  by  step,  and  honors,  wealth  and  fame  were  his. 
Love  came  to  him,  he  wedded  the  woman  of  his  choice ; 
and  after  his  death  she  survived  for  forty-three  years. 
She  lived  one  hundred  years,  lacking  two.  Garrick  was 
born  in  1716 ;  his  wife  died  in  1822,  which  seems  to 
bring  the  times  of  Johnson  pretty  close  home  to  us. 
Throughout  her  long  life,  she  lived  in  the  memory  of 
the  love  that  had  been  hers,  cherishing  and  protecting, 
idolizing,  as  did  Mary  Shelley,  the  one  name  and  that 
alone. 

Johnson  and  Garrick  thoroughly  respected  and  admired 
each  other,  yet  they  often  quarrelled — they  quarrelled 
to  the  last.  But  when  Davy  had  lain  him  down  in  his 
last  sleep,  aged  sixty-three,  it  was  Johnson,  aged 
.  132 


seventy,  who  wrote  his  epitaph,  introducing  into  it  the    SAMUEL 
deathless  sentence  •  *  ♦  «by  that  stroke  of  JOHNSON 

death  which  has  eclipsed  the  gaiety  of 
nations,  and  impoverished  the 
public  stock  of  harm- 
less pleasure." 


X33 


SAMUEL 
JOHNSON 


HREE  months  in  London  and 
Johnson  succeeded  in  getting 
work  on  the  editorial  staff  of 
"The  Gentlemen's  Magazine." 
Prosperity  smiled,  not  exactly  a 
broad  grin,  but  the  expression 
was  something  better  than  a 
stony,  forbidding  stare. 
He  made  haste  to  go  back  to 
Lichfield  after  his  '•  Letty,"  which  name,  by  the  way, 
is  an  improvement  on  Betty,  Betsy  or  Tetsy — being 
baby-talk  for  Elizabeth. 

They  took  modest  lodgings  in  a  third  floor,  back,  off 
Fleet  Street,  and  Johnson  began  that  life  of  struggle 
against  debt,  ridicule  and  unkind  condition  that  was  to 
continue  for  forty-seven  years ;  never  out  of  debt,  never 
free  from  attacks  of  enemies ;  a  life  of  wordy  warfare 
and  inky  broadsides  against  cant,  affectation  and  un- 
truth— with  the  weapons  of  his  dialectics  always  kept 
well  burnished  by  constant  use ;  hated  &  loved  ;  jeered 
and  praised ;  feared  and  idolized. 

Coming  out  of  his  burrow  one  dark  night,  he  encoun- 
tered an  old  beggar-woman  who  importuned  him  for 
alms.  He  was  brushing  past  her,  when  one  of  her  ex- 
clamations caught  his  ear.  "  Sir,"  said  the  woman,  •♦  I 
am  an  old  strugglerl  " 

**  Madam,"  replied  Johnson,  "  so  am  I ! "  And  he  gave 
her  his  last  sixpence. 

But  life  in  London  was  cheap  in  those  days — it  is  now 
134 


if  you  know  how  to  do  it,  or  else  have  to.  Johnson  SAMUEL 
used  to  maintain  that  for  thirty  pounds  a  year  one  could  JOHNSON 
live  like  a  gentleman,  and  as  proof  would  quote  an  im- 
aginary acquaintance  who  argued  that  ten  pounds  a 
year  for  clothes  would  keep  a  man  in  good  appearance ; 
a  garret  could  be  hired  for  eighteen  pence  a  week,  and 
if  anyone  asked  your  address  you  could  reply,  •*  I  am 
to  be  found  in  such  a  place."  Three  pence  laid  out  at  a 
coffee-house  would  enable  one  to  pass  some  hours  a 
day  in  good  company ;  dinner  might  be  had  for  six- 
pence and  supper  you  could  do  without.  On  clean-shirt 
day  you  could  go  abroad  and  call  on  your  lady  friends. 
Among  Johnson's  first  literary  tasks  in  London  was 
the  work  of  reporting  the  debates  in  Parliament.  In 
order  that  the  best  possible  results  might  be  obtained 
he  resorted  to  the  rather  unique,  but  not  entirely  orig- 
inal, method  of  not  attending  Parliament  at  all.  Two  or 
three  young  men  would  be  sent  to  listen  to  the  debates ; 
they  v^ould  make  notes  giving  the  general  drift  of  the 
argument,  and  Johnson  would  write  out  the  speech. 
His  style  was  exactly  suited  to  this  kind  of  work,  being 
eminently  oratorical.  And  as  at  the  time  no  public  rec- 
ord of  proceedings  was  kept  and  Parliament  did  not  al- 
low the  press  the  liberty  it  now  possesses — all  being 
sort  of  clouded  in  mysterious  awe — these  reports  of 
debates  were  eagerly  sought  after.  To  avoid  the  law,  a 
fictitious  name  was  given  the  speaker,  or  his  initials 
used  in  a  way  that  the  individual  could  be  easily  rec- 
ognized by  the  reading  public. 

<35 


SAMUEL  Some  of  Johnson's  best  work  was  done  at  this  time, 
JOHNSON  and  in  several  instances  the  speaker,  not  slow  to  ap- 
preciate a  good  thing,  allowed  the  matter  to  be  reissued 
as  his  own.  Long  years  after,  a  certain  man  was  once 
praising  the  speeches  of  Lord  Chesterfield  and  was 
led  on  to  make  explanations.  He  did  so,  naming  two 
speeches,  one  of  which  he  zealously  declared  had  the 
style  of  Cicero,  the  other  that  of  Demosthenes.  John- 
son becalmed  the  speaker  by  agreeing  with  him  as  to 
the  excellence  of  the  speeches,  and  then  adding,  **  I 
wrote  them." 

The  gruffness  of  Ursa  Major  should  never  be  likened 
to  that  of  the  Sage  of  Chelsea.  Carlyle  vented  his 
spleen  on  the  nearest  object,  as  irate  gentlemen  some- 
times kick  at  the  cat ;  but  Johnson  merely  sparred  for 
points.  When  Miss  Monckton  undertook  to  refute  his 
statements  as  to  the  shallowness  of  Sterne  by  declar- 
ing that  "  Tristram  Shandy  "  affected  her  to  tears, 
Johnson  rolled  himself  in  contortions,  smiled  an  exas- 
perating grimace  and  replied,  •*  Why,  dearest,  that  is 
because  you  are  a  dunce  1"  Afterward,  when  re- 
proached for  the  remark,  he  replied,  "  Madam,  if  I  had 
thought  so,  I  surely  would  not  have  said  it." 
Once,  at  the  house  of  Garrick,  to  the  terror  of  every- 
one, Burke  contradicted  Johnson  flatly,  and  Johnson's 
good  sense  and  good  nature  revealed  themselves  by  no 
show  of  resentment.  An  equally  exciting,  but  harmless 
occasion,  was  the  only  time  that  the  author  of  "  Ras- 
selas"  met  the  man  who  wrote  the  "Wealth  of 
Z36 


Nations."  Johnson  called  Adam  Smith  a  liar,  &  Smith  SAMUEL 
promptly  handed  back  an  epithet  not  in  the  Dictionary.  JOHNSON 
Nevertheless,  old  Ursa  spoke  in  affectionate  praise  of 
"  Adam,"  as  he  called  him,  thereafter,  thus  recognizing 
the  right  of  the  other  man  to  be  frank  if  he  cared  to. 
Johnson  wanted  no  privilege  that  he  was  not  willing 
to  grant  to  others. 

When  Blair  asked  Johnson  if  he  thought  any,* modem 
man  could  have  written  "  Ossian,"  Johnson  replied, 
"  Yes,  sir,  many  men,  many  women,  and  many  chil- 
dren." And  if  Blair  took  umbrage  at  the  remark,  so 
much  the  worse  for  Blair. 

We  have  recently  heard  of  the  Boston  lady  who  died 
and  went  to  Heaven,  and  on  being  questioned  by  an 
arch-angel  as  to  how  she  liked  it,  replied  languidly, 
"  Very,  very  beautiful  it  all  is  !  "  And  then  sighed  and 
added,  "  But  it  is  not  Boston  !  "  This  story  seems 
to  illustrate  that  all  tales  have  their  prototype,  for  Bos- 
well  tells  of  taking  Dr.  Johnson  out  to  Greenwich  Park, 
and  saying,  **  Now,  now,  is  n't  this  fine  !  "  But  John- 
son would  not  enthuse ;  he  only  grunted,  *'  All  very  fine 
—but  it 's  not  Fleet  Street." 

On  another  occasion  when  a  Scotchman  was  dilating 
on  the  noble  prospects  to  be  enjoyed  among  the  hills 
of  Scotland,  Johnson  called  a  halt  by  saying,  "  Sir,  let 
me  tell  you  that  the  noblest  prospect  a  Scotchman  ever 
sees  is  the  highroad  that  leads  him  to  England." 
This  seems  to  display  a  terrible  hatred  toward  Scot- 
land, and  several  Scots,  with  their  usual  plentiful  lack 

X37 


SAMUEL  of  wit  have  so  solemnly  written  it  down.  But  the  more 
JOHNSON  sensible  way  is  to  conclude  that  the  situation  simply 
afforded  opportunity  for  a  little  harmless  banter. 
Another  equally  undisputable  proof  of  prejudice  is 
shown  when  Boswell  tells  Johnson  of  the  wonderful 
preaching  of  a  Quaker  woman.  Johnson  listened  in 
grim,  cold  silence  and  then  exclaimed,  **  Sir,  a  wom- 
an's preaching  is  like  a  dog's  walking  on  its  hind  legs. 
It  is  not  done  well ;  but  you  are  surprised  to  find  it  done 
at  all." 

One  of  the  leading  encyclopedias,  I  see, says,'*  Dr.  John- 
son was  one  of  the  greatest  conversationalists  of  all 
time."  The  writer  evidently  does  not  distinguish  be- 
tween talk,  conversation  and  harangue.  Johnson  could 
talk  and  he  often  harangued,  but  he  was  not  a  conver- 
sationalist. Neither  could  he  address  a  public  assem- 
blage, and  I  do  not  find  that  he  ever  attempted  it.  Good 
talkers  are  seldom  orators.  One  reads  with  smiles  col- 
ored by  pity,  of  Carlyle's  sleepless  nights  and  cold, 
terror-clothed  anticipations  of  his  Lord  Rector's  speech. 
In  deliberative  gatherings  a  very  small  man  could  ap- 
ply the  snuffers  to  the  great  Dictator  of  Letters. 
"  Sir,"  said  Dr.  Johnson  to  a  talkative  politician,  at  a 
dinner  party,  '*  I  perceive  you  are  a  vile  Whig,"  &  then 
he  proceeded  to  demolish  him.  Yet  Johnson  himself 
was  a  Whig,  although  he  never  knew  it ;  just  as  he  was 
a  liberal  in  religion,  and  yet  was  boastful  of  being  a 
staunch  Churchman. 

Johnson's  irritability  never  vented  itself  against  the 
138 


helpless.  His  charity  knew  no  limit — not  even  the  hot-  SAMUEL 
torn  of  his  purse — when  he  had  no  money  to  give,  he  JOHNSON 
borrowed  it.  And  when  his  pension  was  three  hundred 
pounds  a  year,  the  Thrales  could  not  figure  out  that  he 
spent  more  than  seventy  or  eighty  on  himself.  The  rest 
went  to  his  dependents.  In  his  latter  days  his  home 
was  a  regular  museum  of  waifs  and  strays.  There  was 
Miss  Williams,  the  ancient  aristocratic  spinster  who 
came  to  London  to  have  an  operation  performed  on 
one  of  her  eyes.  She  came  to  Johnson's  home  and  re- 
mained ten  years,  because  she  had  been  a  friend  of  his 
wife's.  This  claim  was  enough  and  she  slid  into  the 
head  place  in  Johnson's  household.  Her  peevishness 
used  to  drive  the  old  man,  at  times,  into  the  street,  but 
that  tongue  of  his,  with  its  crushing  retorts,  was  ever 
silent  and  tender  towards  her.  The  poor  creature  be- 
came blind,  and  used  to  shock  the  finicky  Boswell  by 
testing  the  fullness  of  the  teacups  with  her  finger. 
Then  there  was  a  Mrs.  Desmoulins  and  her  daughter, 
who  drifted  down  from  Lichfield  and  came  to  Johnson 
because  forty  years  before  he,  too,  had  lived  in  Lich- 
field. He  gave  them  house-room,  treated  them  as 
guests,  and  each  week  left  a  half-guinea  on  the  man- 
tel of  their  room. 

Then  there  was  the  broken  down  Levett,  and  Francis 
Barber,  who,  coming  as  a  servant,  remained  as  one 
of  the  family,  because  he  was  too  old  to  work.  A 
Miss  Carmichael,  in  green  spectacles  and  bombazine, 
carrying  a  cane,  completed  what  the  Doctor  called  his 

<39 


SAMUEL  "  seraglio."  Writing  to  Mrs.  Thrale  in  playful  mood  tell- 
JOHNSON  ing  of  his  household  troubles,  he  says,  *' Williams  hates 
everybody ;  Levett  hates  Desmoulins,  &  does  not  love 
Williams ;  Desmoulins  hates  them  both ;  Poll  loves 
none  of  them."  And  he,  the  great,  gruff  and 
mighty  Ursa  Major,  listened  to  all  their 
woes,  caring  for  them  in  sickness,  wip- 
ing the  death-dew  from  their  fore- 
heads, wearing  crape  upon 
his  sleeve  for  them 
when    dead. 


X40 


HIS  man  tasted  all  the  fame  that 
is  one  man's  due  ;  he  had  all  the 
money  he  needed,  or  knew  how 
to  use ;  the  coveted  LL.  D.  came 
from  his  Alma  Mater;  and  the 
patronage  from  Lord  Chester- 
field, for  which  he  craved,  only 
that  he  might  fling  it  back.  He 
was  the  friend  and  confidant  of 
the  great  and  proud,  deferred  to  by  the  King  &  sought 
out  by  those  who  prized  the  far  reaching  mind  and  sub- 
tle imagination — the  things  that  link  us  with  the  Infi- 
nite. The  fear  of  hell  and  dread  of  death  that  haunted 
him  in  youth  and  middle  age,  finally  gave  way  to  faith 
and  trust.  When  partial  paralysis  came  to  him  at  mid- 
night, his  sanity  did  not  fail  him  &  knowing  the  worst, 
he  yet  hesitated  to  disturb  the  other  members  of  the 
household,  but  went  to  sleep,  philosophizing  on  the 
phenomena  of  the  case — alert  for  more  knowledge,  as 
was  his  wont.  Morning  came  and  being  speechless,  he 
wrote  on  his  ever  ready  pad  of  paper  and  handing  the 
sheet  to  his  servant,  watched  with  amused  glances  the 
perplexity  and  terror  of  the  man.  He  next  wrote  to  his 
friend,  Mrs.  Thrale,  that  letter,  a  classic  of  wit  and 
resignation,  wherein  he  explains  his  condition  and  ex- 
cuses himself  for  not  calling  upon  her  and  explaining 
the  matter  by  word  of  mouth. 

Such  willingness  to  accept  the  inevitable  is  curative. 
He  grew  better  and  recovered  his  speech.  But  old  age 

141 


SAMUEL 
JOHNSON 


SAMUEL  is  a  disease  that  has  no  cure  save  death.  Johnson  ac- 
JOHNSON  cepted  the  issue  as  a  brave  man  should — thankful  for 
the  taste  of  conscious  life  that  had  been  his.  When  the 
last  hour  was  nigh  he  sent  loving  messages  to  his  clos- 
est friends,  repeating  their  names  over  one  by  one.  His 
last  recorded  words  were  directed  to  a  young  woman 
who  called  upon  him,  *'  God  bless  you,  my  dear." 
And  so  he  passed  painlessly  and  quietly  into  the  sleep 
that  knows  no  waking,  pleased  at  last  to  know  that  his 
dust  would  rest  in  Westminster  Abbey. 
Thus  ended,  as  the  day  dies  out  of  the  western  sky, 
this  life,  seemingly  so  full  of  tempest  and  contradiction. 
The  hours  of  his  life  were  full  of  enjoyment,  and  no 
day  passed  but  that  someone,  weak,  weary  and  worn, 
arose  and  called  him  blessed.  Most  of  his  wild  impre- 
cations and  blustering  contradictions  were  reserved  for 
those  who  fattened  on  such  things,  and  who  came  to 
be  tossed  and  gored.  In  his  spirit  Socrates  and  Falstaff 
joined  hands.  In  his  life  there  was  a  deal  of  gladness — 
far,  far  more  than  Of  misery  and  unrest ;  which  fact  I 
believe  is  true  of  every  life. 
The  Universe  seems  planned  for  good. 
A  world  made  up  of  such  men  as  Samuel  Johnson 
would  be  a  wild  chaos  of  tasks  undone.  But  since  Na- 
ture has  never  sent  but  one  such  man,  and  more  than 
a  century  has  passed  since  his  death  and  we  know  not 
yet  with  whom  to  compare  him,  we  need  have  no  fears. 
The  world  is  held  in  place  through  the  opposition  of 
forces :  and  the  body  of  every  healthy  man  is  the 
14a 


battle  ground  of  animal  organisms  that  match  strength  SAMUEL, 
against  strength.  So,  too,  a  healthy  society  always  has  JOHNSON 
these  strong  and  sturdy  organisms,  which  set  in  play 
other  forces  that  hold  in  check  their  seeming  excess. 
That  the  Divine  Energy  should  incarnate  itself  &  find 
expression  in  the  form  of  man,  and  that  this  man 
should  inspire  others  to  think  and  write,  to  do  and  dare, 
is  a  subject,  the  contemplation  of  which  should  make 
us  stand  uncovered.  The  companionship  of  Johnson 
inspired  Reynolds  to  better  painting ;  Garrick  to  strong- 
er acting ;  Burke  to  more  accurate  thinking — and  hun- 
dreds of  others,  too,  quenched  their  thirst  at  the  rock 
which  he  smote  whenever  he  discoursed  or  wrote. 
Sympathy  is  the  first  essential  to  insight.  So  with  sym- 
pathy, I  pray,  behold  this  blundering  giant,  and  you 
will  see  that  the  basis  of  his  character  was  a  great 
Sincerity.  He  was  honest — doggedly  honest — and  saw 
with  flashing  vision  the  thing  that  was,  and  thither  he 
followed,  crowding,  pushing,  knocking  down  whatso- 
ever opinion  or  prejudice  was  in  the  way.  And  so  he 
ever  struggled  forward.  But  hate  him  not,  for  he  is  thy 
brother,  yea !  he  is  brother  to  all  who  strive  and  reach 
forward  toward  the  Ideal.  Shining  through  dust  and 
disorder,  now  victorious,  now  eclipsed  in  deepest 
gloom,  in  him  is  the  light  of  genius ;  and  this  is  never 
base,  but  at  the  worst  is  admirable,  lovable  with  pity. 
There  was  pride  in  his  heart,  but  no  vanity ;  and  he 
should  be  loved  for  this  if  for  no  other  reason :  he  had 
the  courage  to  make  an  enemy.  In  his  great  heart  were 

Z43 


SAMUEL  wild  burstings  of  affection,  and  a  hunger  for  love  that 

JOHNSON       only  the   grave   requited.  There,  too,  were  fierce 

flashes  of  wrath,  smothered  in  an  hour  by  the 

soft  dew  of  pity.  His  faults  &  follies  were 

manifold,    as    he   oft  lamented  with 

tears,  but  the  soul  of  the  man  was 

sublime  in  its  qualities  ;  world 

wide    in    its    influence. 


144 


so  HERE  ENDETH  VOLUME  SIX  OF  LITTLE  JOUR- 
NEYS, THE  SAME  BEING  TO  THE  HOMES  OF  ENGLISH 
AUTHORS.  &  WRITTEN  BY  ELBERT  HUBBARD  :  THE  IN- 
ITIALS AND  TITLE  PAGE  BEING  DESIGNED  BY  SAMUEL 
WARNER:  THE  WHOLE  DONE  INTO  A  BOOK  BY  THE 
ROYCROFTERS,  AT  THEIR  SHOP,  WHICH  IS  IN  EAST 
AURORA,  NEW  YORK,  U.  S.  A.,  IN  THE  YEAR  MCM  <^    fi 


